


Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche

by Missy



Category: Laverne & Shirley (TV)
Genre: 1960s, Advice, Alley Sex, Anal Sex, Bets & Wagers, Birth Control, Blow Jobs, Comedy, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Growing Up, Hand Jobs, Manuel Sex Under the Table, Menstruation, Messy emotions, Monster Movies, Museums, Not Wearing Underwear, Old Friends, Phone Calls & Telephones, Porn Watching, Porn with Feelings, Post-Season/Series 08 Finale, Scent Kink, Secret Relationship, Secrets, Semi-Public Sex, Slice of Life, Sloppy Makeouts, Songwriting, Spit As Lube, Spooning, Standing Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Woman on Top, bunk beds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:40:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 33,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22311910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Laverne's life is going wonderfully - her job's great, her friends are great, she's even joining in with the protest movement and learning how to write songs, really write them, for the first time.Kissing Lenny Kosnowski during a late-night moviewatching session is like flicking a pebble at a springtime mountain: bound to start an avalanche.When it sweeps away her heart along with her libido, all bets are off.
Relationships: Carmine Ragusa/Original Characters, Laverne De Fazio & Shirley Feeney, Laverne De Fazio/Carmine Ragusa, Laverne De Fazio/Lenny Kosnowski, Shirley Feeney/Walter Meeney
Comments: 30
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All of these tags are for future chapters, sorry folks!

“I gotta tell you Shirl, Bobby’s a real cutie.” Laverne DeFazio strolled casually out of her best friend’s six-month-old-son’s nursery. Walter had finally been transferred back to the states, and he and Shirley were in temporary military housing in Fairfax, Virginia. Laverne had taken instant advantage of the situation and used the frequent flier miles she’d won working with Ajax to see her best friend.

Fort Belvior’s very staid, very prefabricated idea of architecture wasn’t what Shirley had dreamed of so often in the doctor marriage fantasies she’d shared with Laverne when they were younger – no white picket fence, and a Station Wagon was impractical when you had no idea when the next deployment was. But Shirley hadn’t complained about it. She’d done what she could with the place, dressed it up with her Madame Alexander dolls and her grandmother Feeney’s china, and it didn’t look too shabby, even if they didn’t own the furniture and the bathroom floor was a hideous shade of green. 

The upper brass was talking about sending Walter to Washington State, where he’d be giving physicals to draftees heading overseas for Vietnam, so no one knew how long they’d be in Virginia before having to move again. Shirley was in an odd place, Laverne thought, trying to settle down without settling in.

“Thanks, I made him myself,” Shirley said. Her saucy, dimpled grin was both perfectly in-tune with the Shirley Feeney she had been and the Shirley Meeney she had become.

“I think Walter had a little bit to do with it there,” Laverne said. 

“When Walter spends six hours numb from the hips down having a nurse shove at his belly every ten minutes to push a baby out of his body, he can take credit for it,” Shirley said.

Laverne’s features puckered in horror. Was that really what having a child was like? 

Not that she’d been considering the subject lately. She’d been having too much fun playing the field as a single woman. Well. Maybe not too much. Laverne was kind of ashamed of some of that fun – but only a little. Dating an acrobat was one thing; it was quite another to have an orgy on an aircraft carrier when you were drunker than a skunk.

She still hadn’t told Shirley about that one.

But Laverne had come through it all alive and whole. She finally had a good job. She was involved in local marches and protests against the war (which she also couldn’t bring herself to tell Shirley) and against environmental destruction and nuclear weapons (that Shirley knew about, and tried to do what she could from her own place in the world). She’d even been bringing her guitar to songwriting circles at local coffeehouses and trying to really write.

Her life was full and busy. She hung out with folks from work, with Rhonda, with the boys when it wasn't. 

Why she felt a little lonely, a little grotty in comparison to Shirley’s life, she didn’t want to analyze. But Shirley hadn’t been haranguing her about getting married, or saving herself for Mr. Right – heck, after Edna, even her pop had stopped doing that - so she reasoned to herself she'd done all right.

“Y'know, someday you could have all of this," Shirley said.

Whelp. Laverne had been wrong on that count. "Shirl, y'know how it is, ever since Sonny..."

"And how it was after Jake, and Fonzie, and Randy..." Laverne stuck out her bottom lip, feeling the sting at the mention of Randy's name.

Shirley took a breath. "I just want you to be happy."

"Are you happy?" Laverne asked.

Shirley nodded. "In a different way than I thought I'd be. Wanna help me get dinner together?” Shirley asked, as a plane roared overhead and the entire house shook. It was like being through an earthquake, and Laverne white-knuckle clung to the side of the door until it passed. By the time things straightened out, Shirley was knock-kneed.

“I think I’ll do it myself,” she said, and walked, unbalanced, to the kitchenette.

*** 

Her visit lasted for a weekend, but that’s all she could afford to spend with Shirley – one lousy weekend. On Sunday night, she got on a plane and made it back to LA as the sun set.

When Laverne got back from the airport, it was a little past eight and, Lenny was the only one waiting for her, sitting on the stoop with his chin cupped in his hand.

“Hey!” he said cheerfully when she pulled up. 

“Sorry I was late.” She paid the cabbie. “Where is everyone else?”

“Chuck had to go home, said something about a Doctor Who marathon.”

Laverne nodded, stepping out of the cab and grabbing her suitcase. “Aww great, he finally took my advice and he’s seeing a doctor!”

“Not that kinda…never mind,” Lenny said. He automatically reached for her suitcase. “Can I uh, help ya out there?”

“Sure!” she said. “Where’s Squig?”

“Using my bunk for a date with Maxine Grady.”

“Maxine from Cowboy Bills’?” she asked. “The one with the mole on her nose?” 

“One and the same,” Lenny said. Laverne shuddered. “Hey,” he gently elbowed her. “Don’t go judging a book by its drawings.”

“Yeah,” Laverne said, rubbing her own elbow, then elbowing him back. They walked together into the building and up to her apartment. “But I guess ol’ Maxine isn’t as nice as you’d think.”

Lenny shrugged. “It’s okay. I’ll just get your suitcase back into your apartment, and then I’ll go curl up somewhere nice and cozy. Like the truck.”

Her keys jingled when she placed her hand upon his elbow. Her palm lingered there in the bare fold of tanned skin just above the sleeve of his blue, flower-speckled Hawaiian shirt. “Len, you don’t got to go nowhere for awhile. I mean, I’m not sleepy yet, and I don’t have to be at work until eleven tomorrow,” she said. “Maybe we could find a monster movie on the set, like old times – have some ice cream or something?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That sounds like fun.” He brought the suitcase inside after she unlocked the door, and watched her shut it. Then he flopped down onto the couch and started flicking the dial around. That he could pull anything in on that old junker was a miracle, but soon the telltale dramatic sound of a monster movie played through the air.

Laverne bent two spoons on the rock-hard container of chocolate ice cream she’d bought on Friday before she thought to run another under hot water. That worked like a charm. She brought both bowls to the sofa with an unbent spoon, and sat a comfortable distance from Lenny.

This felt good, felt right, in a way that nothing had for a few months. She and Lenny had done this a million times before – only this time he wasn’t buttering popcorn piece by piece for her. Instead, he was eating his own ice cream, watching the Gil Man crawl out of a swampy Florida lake, his big blue eyes wide in the flickering light.

For the first time in months, she took the time to really look at him. California had suited Lenny in the way it had suited Laverne; tanned him, added meat to his bones, made him more confident and independent. 

Laverne should have felt happy for him. But she watched him sitting beside her, she felt jealous. Laverne had managed one successful relationship in the three years she’d been in California – with Sonny, who had left her for an air bag - and the air bags of a waitress in Nevada. Lenny had been with Sabrina for six months before he’d broken up with her, and he’d had a pretty serious relationship with Karen for almost a month before she’d dumped him. It was more than he’d ever had in Milwaukee. Laverne, via comparison, had generally attracted creeps.

Stretching out her bell-bottom covered legs, she sighed. This was her future, wasn't it? She and Len, alone on a Sunday night, doing what they could’ve easily been doing in Milwaukee. What was it going to take for things to change?

That was when Lenny screamed – a very loud, very high-pitched scream – right into her ear. She jumped and threw her arms around his shoulders, in an automatically protective gesture.

When her heart stopped hammering, anger filled her heart. “Whatt’re you yelling at?” she blurted out. But she didn’t move her hands, even though her bowl of ice cream was rapidly slipping from her knee. 

“Uh…” Lenny didn’t say anything. He licked his lips. She caught sight of his dark pink tongue. A little pulse of excitement ran through her, and she was reminded that she hadn’t so much as touched someone else in months. Which was why she was looking at Lenny’s mouth, and moving toward Lenny’s mouth.

And kissing Lenny’s mouth...


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was technically the seventh time she'd kissed Lenny.

It was technically the seventh time she’d kissed Lenny. Once when they were in high school and he was the safest option to practice on; once in his Milwaukee apartment after she’d fixed his jacket; once after their double date with Shirley and Squiggy; one ‘quiet, gentle kiss, like you’d give a baby’s bum bum’. The time she’d kissed his cheek after he’d helped her get over her mother’s death. At the debutante ball. And through any number of awkward mash attempts, though those didn’t count because she hadn’t kissed him back.

Laverne didn’t want to think about it, but she had kissed Lenny Kosnowski more times than she’d kissed all of her boyfriends combined. 

Well. Standing up and fully clothed. 

He was the one who broke the kiss and pushed her back, gently, onto her side of the cushion. “Woah,” he remarked, his Jersey accent heavier than she’d ever heard it. Then he gingerly touched his own bottom lip and looked at her as if she were an alien.

“Woah,” she echoed, and grabbed her dish of ice cream before it ruined the rug.

Then he bit his palm, because no matter how much time he’d spent in LA, he was still Lenny at heart. “Sorry,” he said when he stopped. “Had to express my joy there.”

“It’s all right.” Laverne said, and found herself unable to meet his eyes. She felt like her nerves were on fire – it was like a bad trip, worse than a bad trip, because she could feel what she’d done with every fiber of her being. She hid her flaming hot eyes in her palm and groaned. What the heck had she been thinking? This was worse than leading Lenny on – this was hinting she wanted him. And they had long ago established she didn’t want him. It had been years, and she had no goosebumps. No “special thing” a girl felt for a guy and vice-versa (and, she knew now that she’d been living in LA for awhile, other girls could feel for other girls, and other guys could feel for other guys).

“Uh…should I ask what that change of tongue was about?” he asked nervously.

She stood up and started to pace. “I just…and you…and we…” She gestured futilely, stopping short. “You looked real nice licking your lips.” Wrong words, wrong words!

“Thanks,” he said. Because he was Lenny, and because any compliment, even insincerely delivered ones, were like manna from heaven to him. In spite of his polishing and growth, there was a genuine shimmer of light in his eyes when he looked at her, and it didn’t come from the Gill Man’s fearsome face.

She sat back down on the couch. “I’m sorry, Len. I think it’s the jet lag.” 

He blinked. “Huh. I ain’t never been on a plane. Didn’t know it could do that.”

“Yeah,” she said awkwardly.

“But uh…” he said.

“Yeah?” she said.

“You don’t get that feeling when you look at me, now right? When I’m not licking my lips?” 

He shrunk down a little bit with the words. And before, the answer had been easy – when she’d mainly thrown herself at muscle men and athletes and firemen who thought she was a fun tumble but never wanted to build anything real with her, even the Norman Hughes’ of the world – heroes that Lenny could ape, but didn’t have the courage to be. Before Sonny. Before that air craft carrier. 

Before she looked at Lenny eating ice cream and wondered why she’d priced herself out of sex that involved actual human kindness. The feelings assailing her were new and frightening – love and lust she understood, but this had the potential to annihilate her.

“… Can we just watch the movie?” Laverne begged him.

His shoulders sank imperceptibly. “Sure,” he said.

They turned toward the set and let it play out. The next movie, too. 

When he fell asleep and his head bobbed down onto her shoulder, she let him sit there, drooling down the neck of her peasant blouse, until she too fell asleep.

*** 

“…. And that’s when the Dalek blew sky high! It was one heck of an episode, Laverne, wish you’d been here to see it.”

Laverne pasted a thin smile on her lips as Chuck rambled on, occasionally tightening a screw or making a note of the heaviness of a piece of equipment. While he was testing the endurability of a new space helmet, Laverne was on an all-space-food diet, marking off a sheet and trying to help determine what would please astronaut palates most thoroughly. So far, the freeze dried ice cream tasted good, but the turkey tv dinners needed a lot of work.

So went life at Ajax, which was a hell of a lot more exciting than anything she’d ever done at Bardwells or Shotz.

“Yeah,” she said. “My flight got delayed, so I wasn’t in a real Doctor Who mood there, Chuck.”

“Huh,” Chuck said. “I guess you were busy, entertaining and all. Squiggy told me you and Lenny left your apartment at the same time this morning.”

She choked on the glass of semi-solid Tang she’d been testing.

“…But I’m sure it was just a weird coincidence. He was in a bad place karmatically because his date went wrong and maybe he was jealous…oh hey, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Laverne choked out, and drank water until she felt normal again. _Less orange concentrate,_ she marked down on her form. 

Chuck’s words brought the morning back with ease. Laverne woke up with a horrifying crick in her neck that morning, and Lenny hadn’t left. In fact, he had been making them cereal in the kitchen, and poured her some orange juice to drink with it. If it was the grand extent of his cooking abilities, hers hadn’t been too far afield from such low standards, either. They’d eaten it while watching Captain Kangaroo, then parted on her front stoop. Easy, friendly, domestic.

She did not tell him about the dream she’d had that night. The one where he was making out with her in an alley, his hand reaching up the short hem of her skirt, tearing her panties wide open…

And Chuck wasn’t going to be privy to that dream either. “It was just a little movie night. Y’know, just me and him and the Gil Man..."

“You watched the Gil Man with him?! The most romantic of monsters!?” Chuck gasped. “Laverne, Laverne, Laverne. You’re going to break that guy’s heart all over again.”

“You sound just like Shirl,” she grumped.

“Hard to do, since I’ve never met the lady,” he said cheerfully. 

The lunch whistle promptly blew and Laverne checked her watch – it was 4:32 already. She’d be leaving around seven or eight, stopping only to pick up dinner at Cowboy Bill’s. It was Monday, which meant her social life would be generally dead until at least Thursday. So, another night of TV or music until she fell asleep. 

“I’ll save you a seat in the commissary!” Chuck said, jumping up from the bench. 

“Nah, it’s okay, Chuck,” she said. “I’m kinda full.” She got up and grabbed her purse from the floor. “I think I’ll go walk to the beach and hang out for a half hour.”

Chuck shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said.

“Thank you!” she laughed. Outside, the sun was bright and golden over her head, hurting her tired eyes as she took a short walk to the safety of the beach.

One walk down the shoreline later and she was still trying not to think of her dream. Her dream, which kept making her tingle.

Tingling was just a step away from getting goosebumps – a bad sign. Terrible sign. She had already gone through this in her head – she was not attracted to Lenny. Would never be attracted to him. She’d decided that years ago, when she was twelve and he’d dropped an ice cube down the collar of her blouse at Squiggy’s behest. 

It was Lenny. Horrifying Lenny. The guy whose every flaw, every quirk, every problem she had been privy to since he’d moved into Edna Babbish’s building over ten years before. The guy who knew all of that bad stuff about her, too, but hadn’t run away yet.

And the guy whose truck was right outside the beach’s street-level entrance, selling ice cream and frozen treats to kids fresh out of school.

“Hey, Laverne,” he said awkwardly, his smile crooked, as he kept handing out Fudgsicles to the kids clustered around his truck. He didn’t make a move toward her, and she just waved back at him, and then flushed.

The spectacle she made was minor, yet obvious. “Ooh La La,” remarked a kid who couldn’t be older than five, dripping purple popsicle on the ground. She glared him into silence.

But time passed, and Lenny didn’t leave. Laverne shrugged, approached the truck. “Can I have a Nutty Buddy?” she asked.

“Sure. On the house,” he said, before she could dig into her purse. Lenny served one up immediately and she peeled back the wrapper, biting through chocolate and nuts, sucking on ice cream. By the time the line had disappeared, it was close to the end of her lunch break.

“Can I give you a drive back to Ajax?” Lenny asked, as if he’d read her mind.

“It’s just a two minute walk,” she said.

“Please, Laverne?” he asked.  


She glanced at her drippy cone, then the sun beating down on them. “Okay,” she said.

“Good. People always buy at your place,” he said cheerfully. 

That reasoning was pretty Squiggylike, but she didn’t find it faulty. Instead, she climbed into the back of the truck and let Lenny drive her away as the kids up and down the block jeered their goodbyes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snap decisions have always been Laverne DeFazio's best friend.

It was hot in the truck. Laverne tugged at the collar of her scoop neckline, wondering why Lenny had never invested in air conditioning. Maybe he couldn’t feel the heat because of how cold it was in the back of the truck, where all the ice cream was.

They didn’t talk for awhile, leaving Laverne too much time to observe the interior of the truck. She noticed suddenly that it was much cleaner than the beer truck had been – there was nary a dead fly to be found trapped between the windshield wipers and the dash. 

That was likely due to the fact that they had to deal with local health codes, and that they didn’t want to come off as creepy and invasive in communities filled with children. Still, it was weird to notice.

Maybe that was because Lenny’s eyes were bright and soft in the sunlight pouring in through the front windows – it was easier to see everything by the light of day.

Yeah. That had to be it.

“Len,” she said quietly. His jaw ticked, as if he were bracing himself for a blow – making her feel even worse about everything. What should she do? Pet his head, as she had after he’d proposed to her the first time? “I’m sorry I was a big jerk yesterday…”

“You?! Nah!” he said. “I was just surprised. Me and all the rest of my parts…”

She didn’t cringe at that reference, but it was the sort only he would make. “I just…you looked real good. Different from what I remembered when we were in Milwaukee.”

“Oh. Cause the old me wasn’t so hot?”

 _Nice going,_ she taunted herself. “It wasn’t that, Len. I just don’t have a real excuse. I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you…” she reached over and pressed her palm against his forearm. The muscles there twitched gently. And Laverne knew her hand was lingering for far longer than it ought to. His skin was sunbeam-warm and peach soft. “Have you been working out lately?” 

“I’ve been helping your father lift kegs at Cowboy Bills,” he said. “Hey, Laverne…”

He sent the truck into the Ajax parking lot. “Huh, that was…shorter a drive than I remembered,” Laverne said.

“Laverne,” said Lenny. He pulled the truck to a stop.

“Thanks, Len,” she said. And, when she reached over to open the front door of the truck, she realized her hand had lingered for an uncomfortably long time on his upper arm. That was an awkward mistake – it was a Squiggy-level mistake. She wanted to crawl under the floorboards and die, but she had space cheese puffs to eat.

He took the hand pressed to his arm in his grip. “Laverne,” he said, in a soft, calm voice. “I’m wearing my best shirt.”

She looked down. So he was. His latest “best shirt” was a tie-dyed button up wasn’t anyone’s idea of fashion – anyone’s but Lenny’s. It made him look juvenile and yet a little dangerous –made him fit right in with the hippie parents he was selling to yet looked out of place in a normal world. 

“Laverne,” he said softly, “will you give me a chance?”

She paused to think about it. That was a first. Normally she’d automatically reject him, run away, shove everything down like yesterday’s garbage. But instead she just stayed silent and tried to think of the right words.

He filled in the empty space quickly. “I’ve been thinking too, Laverne. Y’know I’ve always had a crush on you. And uh – even though I’ve been with other girls and been in love with other girls and gone places with them, they don’t make me feel like you do. And I wasn’t gonna do anything about it until you kissed me….But I guess when a lady pitches – I guess the only thing a guy can do is swing for home plate and hope it lands.” He winced at his own metaphor – but she honestly felt sympathetic toward it.

Baseball. It always really did come back to that for them. God, they really needed to go to an Angels game. But her answer was simple and quick. “I gotta think about it, Len.”

“Okay,” he said quickly. “You got all the time you need.” He briefly lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. Heat and tingles traveled up her arm, to her throbbing heart. At that point a bunch of white labcoat wearing employees rushed the truck, and Lenny sprung away from her, getting to work. She smoothed back her hair and felt a little stinging scuff mark over her right breast. 

Ugh. Sunburn.

Laverne spent another couple of hours eating snacks and trying not to scratch at herself as Chuck tried to explain Star Trek to her. It didn’t really sound like Laverne’s cup of tea, aside from the little bits of information she'd picked up about it for her blind date a couple of years ago. But she’d heard of wilder plotlines. 

“So what about Lenny?” he asked her. “The two of you went out walking together?”

“I walked,” said Laverne. “He happened to be there.”

“Ohh,” Chuck said. “So he didn’t kiss your hand?”

She was going to strangle him. “Who told you?” she snapped.

“Agnes from hydraulics told Mary Lou from calculations,” he said. “Word gets around in a place like this, Laverne. How do you think everyone found out about the first words Buzz Aldrin said on the moon so quickly?”

“Because they were on TV!” she grumbled. “Look, Chuck, it’s not a big deal. Me and Len are grown ups. We know what we’re doing.”

“Right,” he said lightly. “Hey, who am I to stand in the way of true love?”

“It’s not true – “ and then the whistle blew. She made a final notation on her spreadsheet and then turned it in. She clocked out at eight on the dot, and outside it was pitch dark. 

She thought about walking home, or waiting for a bus. But there was Lenny, pulling out of the lot, the terminal Galahad in blue jeans. 

This time he didn’t ask her first – just opened the door.

Laverne shrugged, and climbed into the truck.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little long-distance advice.

“Look at that kid, eh! He’s got a cute little _fosetta_ just like Shirley and everything!” Frank DeFazio beamed as Laverne handed her father a series of Polaroid snaps she’d taken at Shirley’s place during her mini vacation. The good pictures were waiting on a Fotomatt roll, but she could give him his foretaste of little Bobby Meeney’s good looks while she waited for them to be developed. 

“Yeah, he’s got something special,” Laverne said. She handed him one more picture – a glossy color blow-up Shirley had done at a local Sears. “This one you can keep.” Laverne had a copy of her own; Shirley, she knew, had sent one to Rhonda and to Carmine as well. If she’d thought of the boys Laverne hadn’t heard about it – but she’d hoped Shirley had.

Frank’s eyes twinkled. “Yeah. Too bad about his chin. But this one’s goin’ on the wall!” he said. He straightened the edge of the picture and hummed in satisfaction. 

Laverne waited with a little knot in her stomach for Frank to ask when she was going to give _him_ a grandkid like Bobby, but Frank didn’t say anything. Maybe he really had mellowed out in response to Edna’s leaving their marriage. Or maybe having an adopted grandkid who didn’t throw up on his good apron was good enough for him at the moment. Either way, he seemed more worried about Shirley and how she was getting along.

Not bad, for a dad who had turned several shades of red when he’d heard his little muffin had locked herself up in a convent for a few weeks for “moral turpentine,” as Squiggy had put it.

“Lemme go check on Rosita, see how she’s coming with your dinner while I find a frame,” Frank said. She watched her father go and settled down in her seat with a sigh. She wasn’t hungry yet, but she’d probably be starving for a Bronco Burger by the time midnight rolled around. She had a plan, and it didn’t involve eating anything juicy.

The men’s room door burst open. “I finished cleaning the grease traps,” Lenny said, coming out shirtless, wiping his arms with his discarded teeshirt. He’d wisely left his “good shirt” back in the truck – would probably don it before they got home. Laverne tried not to notice that Lenny’s tan now extended past the collar of his shirt as she gave him a thin-lipped smile. “Does your father got anything else that needs to be done?”

“Nah,” Laverne said. “He’s probably getting our dinners.”

“Great,” Lenny said. He wiped his armpits with the teeshirt, then shoved around half of it into the back pocket of his jeans, and she noticed he was unsubtly flexing his almost-but-not-quite extent muscles. Yep. Lenny was still Lenny, no matter what. Even better - when he sat down beside her, she caught a whiff of hand soap and Brylcreem, but nothing foul as old grease or b.o.

He was clearly dressing to impress her. Or undressing.

…And he really did look nice with his shirt off…

Laverne squeezed her eyes shut for just a second and let out a sigh, trying to purify her thoughts, trying to keep herself sweet. Lenny was – unless she changed her mind – just a friend. Still just a good, good friend. A friend she probably had feelings for - no she wasn't going to let herself go there yet. “Thanks for doing all this stuff for my Pop, Len,” she said.

“No trouble,” Lenny said. “Your pop’s done a lot for me, it’s only fair to be nice back to him.”

And that was sweet Len, the nice guy. She reached out and patted his hand. “Thanks. You’re a real uh…guy,” she said. She mentally cycled through all of her typical compliments for him – “sweet guy” and “nice guy” and “not a bad kisser.” Nothing fit. She felt like one of Mary Lou’s incomplete calculations when she sat next to him now; the easy answers had been erased.

Lenny considered her words with a shrug. “Yeah. Guess that’s still second-nature to me.”

Thankfully, her father broke up the tension, two plastic-swaddled containers of take-out in one hand, in the other a picture frame with little Bobby’s face peering out of it. “Don’t that look great?”

“It sure does, Pop,” she said, getting up to take her dinner. Lenny peeked over her shoulder at the picture.

“Hey, is that Shirl’s kid?” he asked.

“Yep,” Laverne grinned. “My godson,” she said. At least she was pretty sure she was his godmother – the overhead roaring of jets taking off as she held the baby and tried to hear the base’s chaplain’s instructions over the combined gale force of their howls suggested as much.

Lenny beamed. “Aww. Lookit the little guy. He’s got Shirley’s big blue eyes, and her dimple, and her dark hair…” His eyes widened. “And Walter’s chin.”

Laverne winced. “Yeah, but we don’t talk about that.”

Lenny nodded. “Mummy’s the word,” he said. Reaching out for his meal, he smiled with Frank dropped it into his hands. He shoved a handful of singles into her father’s grip. “Thank you, Mister DeFazio.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “You get that grease trap done?”

“Spic and spanner!” Lenny said. “Made sure everything was in shape. Cleaned up the men’s room a little too. Gonna go warm the truck up – I’ll be ready when you are, Laverne.” He beat feet for the exit

“Thank you. See that, Laverne? Keep your eyes out for a fella like that. A stand-up guy who helps your father at the drop of a penny!” Frank paused. “Like Lenny! But Italian!” 

She was batting two for one in the predictability scale. “Yeah, my eyes are popping there,” she said. Taking the food, she pecked her Pop’s cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

“Same time, same place,” he said serenely. 

As she and Lenny rode home, she thought for the millionth time that she barely understood her father, but understood him completely. Life was weird that way.

“Hey,” Lenny said, as they walked to their apartments, catching her gently by the hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Laverne agreed. “See you.”

She could still smell the hand soap he’d used on her own skin. Was this what being courted – really courted - was like? It had been ages since a man had come at her in this lowkey manner.

She needed advice, clearly. She took a shower, dressed for bed, ate her dinner, and weighed her options. It would be easy enough to try to grab some advice from Rhonda, but it was past midnight – Laverne knew from experience that if Rhonda wasn’t snagging beauty rest for an audition, she was on a date, and if her dates ran past midnight then Rhonda wouldn’t be in a gossiping mood until the next morning. Laverne decided to catch her before or after work – Laverne had to be in bed by three, her shift at Ajax started at 10.

It was two a.m. Which meant it was five a.m. on the east coast. Which meant Carmine should be up and ready for a morning run in Central Park before he and Rick hit up rehearsals for Hair. 

It was a risk, but one Laverne was willing to take. 

The phone rang fifteen times before Rick picked up – it was a miracle she’d gotten him instead of one of their neighbors, since it was a communal phone stuck in the hallway used by everyone on their floor. “Joe’s Crematorium. You kill ‘em, we grill ‘em.”

“Rick!” she said.

“Hey! Laverne! Que pasa?!” he asked. She’d spoken to him a few times before – not for long enough – and she found him to be a smart, ambitious, sarcastic type. 

“Nothing much! Is Carmine still in? I was wondering if I could talk to him.”

“Oh yeah, he was just gearing up for his jog.” Rick muffled the mouthpiece and she could hear them speaking. Carmine joined the party line with a bang and a jounce.

“Hey, Laverne! What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s WRONG, Carmine,” she said. Their old conflict surfaced ever so slightly. “I need some advice, is all.”

“Wait, you’re coming to me for advice instead of Shirl?” he asked. “Did someone mess with you or Frank or the guys or…heck, or Rhonda?” He then whispered into the phone, “uh. I know a couple of fixers, if you don’t mind working with guys who worked with Sonny…”

“Hey, I can hide my own bodies,” Laverne said. Then she paused. “What the heck am I saying? I’m calling to ask you for romantic advice.”

There was a pause before Carmine burst into laughter. 

“If you’re gonna be a jerk, I’m gonna hang up!” Laverne pouted into the phone. She even teared up a little. Were Carmine in the same room with her she would’ve already socked him in the nose, but long distance phonecalls weren’t great for getting out your physical frustration.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But if you knew how I spent my Saturday night...” In spite of herself, Laverne leaned a little closer to the phone, hoping to pick up some salacious gossip. “Never mind, I’ll tell you about it later. Why do you need romantic advice?”

Laverne took a deep breath. “I kissed Lenny last night.” There was a long pause. She thought of the long distance minutes ticking away – something she’d never been worried about when they first moved out to LA – a different situation when she had to pay her own bills alone. “And I think I might want to give him a chance. That I might be falling for him.” Or at least her glands were.

A pause filtered between them. “Is this a part of your ‘every guy might be Mr. Right’ stuff?” Carmine asked.

“No!” Laverne yelled.

“’Cause I gotta tell you, Laverne, trying that stuff on him ain’t fair. You know he’s always liked you since you were kids. If you’re leading him on…”

“I ain’t leading him anywhere!” Laverne blurted out. “We were watching a movie together, y’know – Creature from the Black Lagoon. And I just….he looked good in the TV light. I’ve never seen him look that way before. And I started thinking about how much the both’ve us have changed, and about how many creeps I’ve been dating lately. There were a coupla really nice guys in there, but…well, y’know.”

“Yeah, I know. Married guys, sailors and jerks,” Carmine said.

She glanced at the door, but Squiggy didn’t burst through it, to her relief. “Right. So I kissed him. And then we got to talking and I told him I’d think about giving him a chance and now I don’t know what to do.” Laverne started pacing with the phone, which fell from the couch with a jingle, nearly tripping herself in the process. “Hello?”

“I’m still here,” Carmine said. “So you want me to tell you if being with Lenny’s a good idea?”

“Yeah. And now you know why I can’t tell Shirl. She’d call me crazy. Remember how she used to make fun of me for hanging out with them? She’d grill me to death.” 

“Shirl married a guy with Zero Mostel’s chin. If anyone oughta know love’s blind…”

Laverne bit her lip to hold back a horse laugh. Walter was a nice – and incredibly dull - guy, but compared to Carmine and Shirley’s fantasy mates, he wasn’t a physical specimen of male beauty. “So?”

“So,” Carmine said. “I think trying to do something with Lenny isn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Thanks,” Laverne said, then paused for a beat. “Wait, really?”

“Hey, why not? Len’s a stand-up guy, he treats the girls he’s with like gold, he makes a good living, and he’s good to your pop, likes Shirley, good to kids and animals. He’s learned how to take a shower and wear a suit since he moved to LA, and the talent agency’s going pretty well. It’s not like he does that thing with honey that Squig does…”

“WHAT thing? You never told me what that was!” Laverne blurted out.

“Some secrets a fella needs to keep,” Carmine said firmly. Then he muttered, “Unlike that thing I do with my tongue, apparently.”

Laverne’s ears turned scarlet. “Hey, I had the right to tell Shirl! Besides, if we didn’t, Squig would’ve probably blabbed about it.” 

“We were lucky she took it like a champ,” Carmine said. “I thought she’d tell Walter and he was gonna come after me with a scalpel.”

“I think the statute of limitations went south before he got involved, Carmine. Besides, she was nine months pregnant when I told her. It was take it well or go into labor.” 

She really did still tell Shirley everything. Everything except the aircraft carrier thing. And whatever was happening with Lenny. But Shirley’s only response to the fact that Carmine and Laverne had tried a weeklong fling which had ended in a series of fiery arguments when history repeated itself as they tried to move things beyond the bedroom – calm as you please – was to ask “did he do that tongue thing with you, too?”

He had, and she’d hated it. Laverne had no idea how that had gotten back to Carmine, but it had, and Carmine had spent Christmas of 1967 refusing to take Laverne’s call because of it. They only started talking again because Shirley had twisted their ears on a party line and forced them to.

Carmine insisted it was payback for him calling her frigid during his stand-up act years before.

“Yeah,” Carmine chuckled. “And hey, we’re all still friends. Shirl’s got a kid and a husband. You’ve moved on. I moved on with six girls from the costuming department….”

Laverne’s eyes bugged out. “Oh, you’ve gotta tell me everything,” she said.

He did.

She went to work with bags under her eyes and a lot of new information about human bendibility. 

*** 

Another sleepy day of space food and Chuck’s blandishments. When Laverne came home, she found Rhonda sunning herself on her balcony in the waning heat.

Laverne had been planning on having some leftovers and getting an early nap so she could confront Lenny, but she had wanted to speak to Rhonda.

“Hi-Ho!” Rhonda said merrily as she heard the door close, discarding her tinfoil and sitting up in her lawnchair. “I’m afraid Rhonda had another tanning emergency.”

“It’s okay,” Laverne said. “Hey, Rhonda – could I get some advice from ya?”

Excitedly, Rhonda got up from the lawnchair, seizing Laverne by her shoulders with enthusiasm. “Rhonda has been waiting ages for you to say that,” she said. “We’ll start with your hair, and then we’ll get out the eyeshadow…”

Laverne wrinkled her nose. “Not that kinda advice, Rhonda.”

“Oh,” Rhonda said, tilting her head. “Well, Rhonda is seasoned enough to help you out with a variety of issues. Whatever’s the trouble?”

Laverne blurted everything out. “I kissed Lenny two nights ago, and I think I might be falling for him. Or maybe I just wanna have a fling with him – I don’t know. I just have feelings I ain’t never had for him before all out of the blue and I can’t tell Shirl about them so – what do you think?”

Rhonda took a pause. Her eyelid twitched. “Laverne. Are you sure you’re not…a tad desperate for affection?”

Laverne stuck her chest out. “You take that back!”

“Withdrawn!” Rhonda said, and shrank back a step. “It’s simply that Leonard is a kind man, a decent man – but he’s not…well…”

“An actor?” 

Rhonda shrugged. “Well, I was going to say ‘not Carmine’. Aside from Sonny, he really has been the peak of your masculine experience in this town, though Wheezer was a gentleman and that Mike fellow was kind.” 

Those two relationships had been brief, but Laverne had to agree – both had been nice guys who had treated her decently. Laverne shrugged. “Carmine and me are like oil and water. With Len, I don’t know…it’s easy. Nice and warm. Real warm…”

“Laverne?” Rhonda said, brushing the tip of her finger against Laverne’s cheek, “you’re blushing. Rhonda has never seen you blush once in the three years she’s known you.” 

“Oh great. Now my cheeks are betraying me,” said Laverne, and she started patting them down.

“I wouldn’t call it a betrayal,” Rhonda said logically. “But perhaps your skin knows what your heart feels.”

“That’s…awful poetic,” Laverne said. She stopped trying to beat the blush out of her face and considered her words.

“Thank you! Rhonda did spend a weekend with a handsome young lyricist named Jean Luc in the early ‘60s’,” she said. 

Laverne shook her head, letting Rhonda have her minor victory. 

A knock sounded at the door – which was atypical for both her neighbors and her family. “Laverne? It’s me,” Lenny said. Then an explanation came. “You got your door locked. Is everything all right?”

“Just a second!” She flung a look at Rhonda, mouthing _thank you_. How did you tell someone to scram without telling them to scram?

But the actress smiled, gathering up her tanning equipment while Lenny whined on the other side of the door. “Rhonda knows when she’s become a third wheel,” Rhonda smiled. “Good luck!” And she left the apartment, sliding back to her own condo.

“These thorns are pinchin’ my fingertips…” Laverne ripped open the door and there was Lenny- all in tied dye, all in clean jeans. He had a fistful of roses in his hand, and she was afraid to ask where he’d gotten them from.

“Hi,” she said softly, and took the roses, ignoring the pinch of their thorns. “Come in?”

“Yeah,” Lenny said. “Uh…Sorry for the spontaneousness of this occasion. I’m still trying to give you room, but Missus Kestenbaum – y’know her, the nice old lady down the block? – well, her roses came in, and she offered me twenty bucks and a little bunch of pretty ones to help prune them.”

“Thanks, Len. But you ain’t never cared about spontaneous,” Laverne pointed out. She put the roses in a cut glass vase that Shirley had left behind, and admired how they looked as she filled it with water from the tap.

They fit. Everything fit.

He gave her an awkward smile. “Yeah. But most of the time I got Squig with me. He kinda greases the social wheels so to speak.” 

She thought of all of the times he’d burst into her apartment just to make her happy when he knew she was alone and Squiggy was off doing God knew what. The memory made her smile. 

“You got plenty of confidence,” she said.

“Nah.”

“Yeah!” Laverne said, and poked his shoulder as she returned to stand before him. “Uh. So. I’ve been asking some folks about what I should do.”

“Like?”

“Carmine.”

Lenny’s blue eyes went wide. “You told Carmine that we made out?”

“Kind of!” He whined. “But I needed advice,” she said. “And I can’t ask Shirl, and I sure as heck can’t tell my pop.”

“Yeah, and I can’t tell Squig,” Lenny said. Laverne tilted her head. “I love him like a brother, Laverne, but Squig loves gossip. Everyone in the world would know if I asked him."

She remembered when Lenny used to know all of the good Shotz gossip and realized who he'd been trading it with. But, she supposed, it was different when the gossip was about you. “And we don’t have Edna to talk to no more,” Laverne said. She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Yeah,” he said. Lenny shoved his hands into his pockets. “So uh..Now that you got your roses, guess I’m gonna go back home.”

But as he moved toward the door, she placed a hand upon his upper arm. “Wait, Len.” She took one of his hands, pulling it out of his pocket. “Let me make sure you don’t got any thorns left over,” she said. Examining Lenny’s big hand, she didn’t see any thorns but noticed a few nicks. “Do they hurt?” she asked, and lifted his hand to her lips, kissing it. Echoing his earlier touch.

“Not when you do that,” he said. Then, “Laverne?” His voice was throaty, filled with confusion. Her fingertips traced the way from his hand to his shoulder.

Though she’d absorbed plenty of sage advice since she’d first kissed Lenny, her instincts still drove the day.

Laverne cupped his cheek and drew him the remaining inches down to her mouth.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bet is on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here, at last, is the smut y'all ordered.

She took a long, deep breath – then gave a hungry little sigh – as she reached up and looped her arms around Lenny’s neck. He made a muffled sound of surprise – his fingers skated down her arm and cupped her shoulders, and she could feel his fingers clutch at and hold her. 

The tips of her fingers ran up along his neck – and found his greasy hair, which she strenuously tried to ignore even as she grabbed onto the back of his head to hold him steady. Laverne used the time to patiently coax his tongue into her mouth – awkwardly, they tried to entangle their tongues, grunting as they managed to miss one another. 

The next try got them tangled back up. She was so preoccupied with trying to kiss Lenny the right way, it took Laverne a minute to realize she was being walked backward toward the couch. She didn’t quite know what was happening until her bottom hit the couch cushion. Lenny didn’t push her any further, but he kissed her back as deeply as he could, sitting down beside her, their knees touching.

Laverne needed air – and time to think without trying to follow her Pied Piper glands. She pulled back. “Lenny,” she added, and pushed him gently away.

He understood that signal after a million rejections from her. He sat back on side of the cushion, and grimaced as he did so. “Sorry, Laverne,” he said started rubbing the back of his neck. She knew from his posture that she expected her to kick him out. “I just got a little crick. You ain’t that tall, y’know.”

“Are you okay?” She reached for his arm and he pulled away.

“Fine,’ he said. “I got a little carried away with your…womanly essence, is all.” He squeezed his thighs together and tried to cross his legs, and she flushed at the implication.

But she wrinkled her nose. “You sound like Squig when you say that.”

“Really?” His eyes widened. “Oh boy! I knew if I kept trying I’d sound sophisticated.”

“Len…” She shook her head and looked over at him. His lips were red from her kisses, his cheeks were flushed, and his hair was rucked up in the back. But he looked really good. Good enough to make her feel tingly again.

But she needed to set down some sort of ground rules before surrendering to her tingles. She was not going to let herself get aircraft-carrier level carried away anymore. 

Lenny took her silence for a form of rejection. “I knew it,” he said, and curled up face-down into the sofa’s arm, his behind facing her. “Everything is always too good to last …”

“Lenny!” She pulled him out of the tight ball he’d crawled into and he sprawled free, back onto her lap. “Sit down and let me see you.”

He turned away and stared at her front door. “No! I don’t wanna hear how much of a mistake it was or how you want me to go away anymore!”

“Stop it! You’re getting gunk all over my good pillows!” He groaned but wouldn’t give in to her tugging. Laverne let her arms drop to the side. She wanted to strangle him, but she also loved him, and that was the big problem. _I love you. I’m just not IN love with you,_ her memories taunted her. She’d said it to him far too often. Now she definitely felt more but had no idea what to do about it. “Len, quit it! I don’t want you to go anywhere!”

His shoulders slumped, his posture relaxing. “Okay,” he said, and turned back around to face her. Lenny voice was even, noncommittal, and he tried to arrange himself casually against the couch. She saw him squeeze his thighs together again, and noticed suddenly how hard he was even in light of his humiliation.

 _Don’t look at his thing, no, what are you, five? Don’t look at his **dick…**_ her mental chanting must have made the staring obvious, because Lenny covered his jean-covered crotch with his palm. 

“Geeze, Laverne. You’re making me feel like a big chunk of steak out here!” he said

She moaned and covered her face. “Sorry. Everything’s a mess. I’m making it worse. I asked you for space and you gave it and then I fell all over my own big dumb words.”

“That’s easy to fix! Why don’t you do what Shirl always said?” he asked. “Whenever you don’t know a big word, look it up. That’s what I do, too!”

His eyes held no guile at all – he wasn’t making fun of her. “That’s not what I – ugh.”

“Doesn’t explain why you were looking at my prick tho,” he said.

She slapped his arm as he horse laughed. But then she watched him enjoy his smartalecky joy and came out with it. “Len, why don’t we make a deal?” she asked.

He stopped laughing and tilted his head. “What kind?”

“The fun kind,” she said. “Why don’t we just…spend time together? Make out. Maybe more than make out. See where things lead us. And if it’s right, then we can figure out what that means.”

He tilted his head at her. “This has to be some kind of trick. It sounds like getting cake and ice cream for dinner.”

She laughed. “It’s 1968, Len. Have you looked around lately? Everyone’s having ice cream and cake for dinner.”

He sat back for a minute. “Okay. We can do whatever you want in…here. Or your bed. Or maybe the shower?”

“Lenny!” She didn’t even have a new bed and had been sleeping on her couch for months. And she had no idea how to explain that one to him.

But he didn’t ask for more. “How about a little bet on top of your deal?”

“What kinda bet?” she asked suspiciously.

He cocked his chin. “How about every time I make you cream, we go out on a real date? And not hiding out in here but a real place where people are gonna see us and maybe think that we might be together?” But Lenny winced a bit at his own boldness and cringed back.

She blinked at him in surprise. Lenny had his own moral fiber and code – she knew that because she knew him, but also understood as much from his little vegetable slicer speech when she’d moved in with David. That trying a fling while she figured out what they meant to one another might twinge that code had not occurred to Laverne. But she shook her head. Was she orgasmic? Absolutely. Could she reach the stratosphere with every man? Hell no. The possibility was definitely there with Lenny, but she worried she might disappoint him.

“That’s if you can get me to come,” she said simply.

He grinned at her. “Oh, I can get you to cream.”

She wrapped an arm around his neck. “You wouldn’t lie to me Len?”

“Never.”

She stroked his cheekbone. “That’s a promise?”

He nodded. “That’s a promise, babe. Let’s kiss on it.”

Only Lenny would remind her of much more innocent times while they made out like teenagers on the couch. As if they shared some sort of spooky mind-link, he returned to making out with her, this time pulling her into a kiss. When they parted, she regarded him thoughtfully. 

“What?”

“I got a counter-bet,” she said.

“Shoot,” Lenny replied.

“What if every time I make you come, we get to do something I’ve always wanted to do?” Laverne asked.

“Like go to Venus or something?” Lenny said.

She shook her head. “No, like we…” She leaned up and whispered an idea into his ear.

His eyes bugged out and he pulled back from her in shock. “Laverne!” 

Now she felt a wave of shame at her forwardness. “What? You don’t think it makes me weird or something?”

“No! I just didn’t know girls liked that kind of stuff. You’re not gross or nothing but _wow_.” 

He seemed amazed by her – then again, he was the kind of guy who thought girls couldn’t spit. She nervously crossed her legs and rubbed at the back of her knees. “You don’t think it makes me cheap? Less of a lady?”

He gasped at her. “Laverne! You were a lady when you passed out drunk in a vat in some guy’s shorts. You were a lady when you got in trouble with the Purple Fiends and had to get down from a coathook with Shirl. You were a lady when you got pickled with those sailors…”

She rubbed her face. “God, this is so embarrassing.”

He peeled her fingers away from her face. “You’re always a lady. You’re always the prettiest, classiest lady I know.”

“Len, have you not called me easy?” she said.

“Yeah, but it ain’t like I called you ‘Port Laverne’.” She glowered at that memory. “Besides, I ain’t no virgin, neither. We’ve been around a couple of Lego blocks and we’re doing okay. And it’s not like I’m asking you to move in. Anyway, you don’t insult a girl when she gives you ice cream for dinner.” He lifted his chin. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

“I already told you,” she said, leaning against his chest with a sigh. “A terrific one.” 

They hugged. “The ice cream was a metafloral,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.

And then Laverne yawned. Either she was getting old, or the past couple of days of late night worrying had finally caught up with her.

“Wanna go to bed?” he asked.

“Mmmm.” She pulled back and sat on her end of the sofa. “I guess we’ve gotta take a raincheck on the whole bet thing.”

“It’s okay. You need sleep. And - well, the top half of me’s okay with it; the rest of me has to user your bathroom.”

Laverne stroked his forearm. “Do you want me to help you out?”

He flushed. “We ain’t even gotten to second base and you wanna give me a tugjob?”

“So?” she said. “C’mon, Len…” She popped the top button of her blouse and wiggled her eyebrows and his eyes flew wide.

“This is working on my blood pressure hard enough,” he begged. “Just let me ease into being with you a little, huh? Like a warm bath. No, a hot bath. A hot bath that makes you feel so good…I’ll be right back.”

Laverne smiled as she watched him flee for her bathroom. She readied the couch for bed, leaving behind her jacket, her shoes, and taking her hair down. Though Lenny was circumspect and quiet, she could hear his occasional moans as he took care of himself. She rested upon the couch for a minute and closed her eyes. While his sounds were inspiring, she didn’t have the energy left to touch herself. 

A few minutes passed before he emerged, looking a whole lot more relaxed. “Hey, Laverne - did you know someone stole your bed and replaced it with a pool?” he asked.

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a long story, Len.” She fluffed up the spare pillow and placed it near the arm of the couch. “Do you have to go home?”

“Uh, actually – I better not. Squiggy’s entertaining a couple of girls he met at the beach while we were running auditions for _The Devil’s Bloody Negligee_ and he told me he was gonna play Tarzan with them and the last time I walked in on him playing Tarzan he threw his back out trying to swing from the top bunk. It’s a bad idea all around.”

“I’m not gonna ask any questions,” she sighed. “Stay here tonight. Get the lights?”

He did. It took a bit of maneuvering, but Lenny ended up behind her, and she spooned into his front, snuggled against his chest with her head on his arm. Their long, skinny bodies complimented each other well.

“Did you think of me when you..?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said, and buried his face in the back of her neck. “Always.”

Proud of herself, she smugly drifted off to sleep in his arms

*** 

Morning arrived far too early. As the sun pierced her eyes, Laverne’s mind scattered and swept itself into focus. 

“Len?” 

He let out a wheezy snore from behind her, his arms tightening around her middle. 

“Lenny?” 

He ground himself against her behind in his sleep. This wasn’t her first encounter with a morning hard-on, or Lenny’s hardness in particular, but the position was a new and tempting one. She ground back into it, and he moaned in his sleep. Her nerves flared to life and she wondered how much she could get away with before she had to get to work.

She wanted to surrender to it – and to fun – but getting laid off from Ajax was the last thing she needed, and she desperately wanted to make up for extra time. And so she stage whispered, “Lenny, Godzilla’s attacking the city!”

He shoved her off the couch with a gasp, “I’ll save you!” 

Laverne whined as she hit the floor. Lenny sat up, tossed a look over his shoulder and at the door – and then noticed her sitting there. “Laverne! Did Godzilla do that?”

He offered her a hand up. “Lenny, there is no Godzilla! I just needed you to wake up. What time is it?”

He came awake blinking. “Oh!” He sat up, yawning, stretching, and then slicking back his hair. He glanced at his wrist. “It’s…four thirty o something…there’s a four..”

She peered at his wrist. “Len, your watch is drawn on.” 

“That’s so I won’t lose it,” he said.

She shook her head at him. Only Lenny.

“I’ve gotta find out…” she glanced at the wall clock and felt relief fill her. “Five o’clock. I don’t have to be at Ajax ‘til nine.”

“Good.” Lenny groaned, flopping back onto her couch.

She sat down on the edge of the middle. “Gee, and here I am wide awake…” She traced the line of his nose and the roundness of his chin with the tip of her finger. 

That woke him back up. She smiled at him. He smiled back and reached up to cup her cheek. 

They took their time with their kisses, with getting horizontal again, this time with her tucked underneath his long body. Angling her legs high over his hips, she could grind herself against him while he gasped into her mouth and humped back.

Neither of them were in a particular hurry to get to the final act, but eventually Lenny pulled back. “Can I get something off of you now?” he begged.

She rolled her eyes and reached for the buttons of her blouse. That came off quickly, and then she reached up for the buttons on his shirt. Lenny trembled slightly as she unbuttoned him, and then pulled the shirt up. She had to slide the teeshirt off with it, and then she stroked his chest, fascinated by the softness of him, the warmth. He shook like a tuning fork and she made a soothing sound.

She smiled and shook her head as his blue eye plead with her silently. “Nice body, Len.”

Her words were enough of a distraction to snap him out of his anxiety. “Thank you,” he chirped, and hungrily reached down for another kiss.

While Lenny was distracted, she shrugged her blouse off and tried to reach for the clasp of her bra. But she couldn’t quite get the closure in this position, especially with the distraction of his kisses. 

“Just let me get…” she muttered, arching her back, which made Lenny grunt softly against her jaw.

He pulled back. “Why do girls always wear all of that stuff?” Lenny asked. “Why don’t they got bras with the cups cut out or something?” One of his hands joined hers on her back as she sat up and tried to grab and pull the clasp free. He was less experienced with women’s undergarments than she was, and with their differing gestures combined the strap painfully twisted and dug into her back.

“They do!”

His eyes widened and his hands went limp on her back – and then he bit his wrist. She could imagine what he was thinking, and wondered how he’d feel if she’d show him some of her scantier panties and the other brown-wrapped novelties she’d been buying. Or if he’d already seen them – she didn’t put anything past Squiggy prowling through her lingerie while she was out.

“This is stupid,” she sighed. With that, Laverne slid her legs from around him and her feet to the floor, sliding each strap down her shoulder, then pulling down the cups of the bra and sliding it to the front. The clasp was easy enough to open from there, and she tossed the bra onto the floor. She realized she’d have to wear her black lace one to work, but it was better that than nothing at all. It was 1968 everywhere else in the world, but at Ajax women wore bras and stockings or else.

Topless in the warm California air, she sat nervously back. “So…?”

Lenny’s eyes were wide. Reverence and lust were in them. “You’re beautiful.” But the words were a whisper. 

Laverne launched herself at Lenny hungrily, and suddenly he seemed to have no idea what to do with his hands. His mouth had no problem, and they began to neck with a frantic energy. Somehow, she clambered up into his lap, planting her knees on either side of his hips. For a minute, he buried his face between her breasts and inhaled, as if trying to memorize the scent of her skin.

His kisses were open and sloppy as he rubbed his stubbly cheeks against her skin. He planted another against her sunburn mark, and made his way to her nipples.

Those he kissed lightly before flicking his tongue against them in turn. Heat filled her up, rushing through her veins, making her clutch the back of his head with one hand and splay along his shoulders with the other. He switched breasts, and his left hand gently squeezed whatever he couldn’t fit into his mouth at the time.

At this point they were dry-humping, and he felt stone-hard under her – she squirmed, trying to fit him lengthwise against the seam of her jeans, so he could rub against her clit. One of Lenny’s hands found her bottom and pulled her even tighter to him, but a minute later he pushed her away. “I gotta get my pants off,” he said, his voice a note above hysteria.

“Huh? Oh!” She scooted off of his lap and got to work on her own jeans. She wondered for a second if she should leave her panties on, but before she could look at him or make a decision, he had her back in his lap.

His mouth was open against her neck, his hands trying to arrange her against him, get the flap of his boxers out of the way. Then rationality settled in. “Laverne? Are you on the pill?” 

At least one of them had a little blood still flowing above the waist. “Yeah.”

“Do you have to take…?” he asked.

“That’s not how it works,” she panted.

“Okay,” he gulped. But then he seemed to have second thoughts. “No. No this ain’t right.”

“Lenny!” It was like having a sledgehammer smashed into her genitals. Could girls get blue balls, she wondered. Blue ovaries? 

“No, Laverne! You deserve sateen sheets…or at least a bed. Not being bounced up and down and up and down and…” His eyes crossed.

“Len, focus.”

He gestured at the couch. “You deserve better than this for the first time we do it.” He crossed his arms over his chest looking utterly implacable. 

Laverne glared at him and strongly considered punching him in the arm, just once. This was not a time for his romance gene to kick in – that he was a romantic just like her was beside the point.

But only Lenny could look at her like this and think she was beautiful and start babbling about sateen sheets. She realized suddenly that she probably had a horrible case of morning breath, and that her makeup had probably melted into her laugh lines. But Lenny wasn’t complaining, and she could overlook the drying grease in his hair and the scent of his now-stale cologne. It was never going to be perfect, and that was all right. Perfect was for statues, or characters in fairytales.

“Okay, but it’s gonna be real hard to do it in your place without Squig finding out,” she said. “Now _I_ need to use the bathroom.”

“Huh? _oh!_ ” he flushed and caught her by the arm as she tried to leave the room and sat her down. “Wait, Laverne. Just ‘cause we ain’t doing **it** doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. And I wanna know if you can make me cream,” he breathed into his ear. 

Her eyes widened. Well, she could do that easily enough. Neither of them had entirely calmed down from their heavy make-out session, and a series of fresh kisses reignited their spark.

“Yeah?” she asked, breaking away from her mouth and slipping her fingers downward, through his chest hair, trying to learn the texture of his skin. He nodded, a look of panic in his eyes. She nuzzled the side of his neck as he bit his bottom lip and watched her hand descend toward his cock.

When she touched him, he felt warm, the very tip of him wet, but not wet enough to facilitate the handjob she wanted to give. She needed more lubrication than her palm sweat, and, while he was distractedly nibbling on her neck, she tried to discreetly spit into her palm, but her hand still wasn’t wet enough.

Lenny tisked her fondly, pulling away from her neck. “You still can’t spit,” he observed, and then took her palm in between his own and spat into it.

“Lenny!” she protested – though she couldn’t fight him too hard, at least her hand was now wet enough.

“Hey, it gets wet or it gets raw. Believe me, I know.”

She shook her head at him while he watched her face. Lenny sucked in a breath when she finally encircled him with her first. She wanted to tease him more – planned to tease him more – but she was so worked up she wanted to make him come – wanted the guarantee of more sex with him, more adventures like this.

While he still possessed the ability to speak, he muttered, “over the panties or under?” She was surprised that she was being given a choice. The majority of the men she’d been with before had never bothered to ask. 

“Uh…under.” Lenny’s palm ghosted over a nipple and her belly on his way downward – then he slipped a hand under the border of her underwear and spread his fingers across her sex. He whimpered into her neck as he explored, taking the time to slick up his fingers.

She could feel how wet she was from the dry humping session they’d shared – Lenny moaned deep in his throat when he realized it too, hooking his middle finger around and sliding it gently up within her. 

The kiss went from playful to soul-deep, and her hand kept moving in a slow, teasing rhythm, as his fingers dove and thrust in reply. She flexed around his fingers and squeezed his cock at the same time, and Lenny gasped. 

“Ever thought of me when you did this by yourself?” he asked.

“Not..uh…maybe…mm…Len!” He found her clitoris after a few clumsy tries, and rubbed around it, avoiding touching it directly.

“I think about you,” he said sincerely. “Every single time.”

Her heart melted and her pussy throbbed. 

“Though sometimes you’re making out with Rhonda…” 

“Lenny!” 

He winced. “Hey, a guy’s gotta…” he shivered and bucked up in her grip as she twisted her fist at the bottom of a long stroke. He surged toward her and kissed her again. Then they were beyond any sort of verbal expression of emotion.

But she could see the love in his eyes – the need – as his fingers moved faster and they broke apart. They were a little off-rhythm but getting there, pulling each other along toward orgasm, step by step. 

Little zinging thrills ran through her; she stopped moving her hand on his cock and sat still to soak in the pleasure screaming through her nerves.

At the heart of it all was Len, his clever, fast fingers moving as quickly as they could. “C’mon Laverne,” he rooted softly. He sounded like he did in the old days, when he was cheering her on during a brawl with Rosie Greenbaum, or when she was sliding into home plate during a ballgame - or when he was trying to coax her into singing with him. The sweetness of him and the speed of his hand began to lead her toward the summit of pleasure; she squeezed her thighs together and clasped his hand tight, her hips working against his touch, swiveling slightly.

Laverne arched her back as the pleasure started to take over. His right hand came around to cup her breast, hold it, and let her motions brush a nipple back and forth against his palm. Her free hand grabbed the one holding her breast tight as she curled into his fingers and felt that familiar sensation of tension race along the soles of her feet, the pleasure going intense, making her squeeze down tight around him before she began to pulse, moaning against Lenny’s lips.

When she returned to her right mind, Lenny was watching her. Pride, affection and desire made his features soften.

“Sorry,” she said. “I kinda forgot you back there.” Her hand found him again and moved more vigorously. Lenny writhed against the couch cushion.

“Laverne…” His pink cheeks were turning redder, either from the embarrassment of being fully exposed in his need for her or from what she was doing to him. He pulled his fingers free of her panties and raised them to his mouth. She heard him inhale her scent before plunging his fingers into his mouth, licking and sucking away her lubrication. The sight shocked and pleased her – did the smell and taste of her turn him on that much?

He bit down on his index finger, whining as his hips bucked and bucked into her. Shivering, she felt him expand in her hand, get a little hotter and impossibly harder. Experience told her that this was it – she squeezed him by the base of his cock and he squalled against his hand, belly flexing, hips twitching involuntarily. He throbbed in her grip, and then started to come.

The first thread shot far enough to slap him right between the eyes – two more hit him in the chest and chin. A few licked dangerously close to the couch cushions as they hit his torso. Laverne didn’t stop tugging on him until he’d left a pretty sizeable puddle behind on his own belly, and until Lenny gently pulled her hand away from his now-beet red and twitching cock.

She couldn’t resist her first instinct and bent over his torso, licking a little of the come up from his belly and swallowing it, making him shudder and his cock drool. Half of her was surprised it didn’t taste like Bosco, but lay salty and thick on her tongue, like any other man she’d ever sucked off.

Laverne then gently cleaned off Lenny’s face and chest with a puff of Kleenex while he lay helpless, red-faced and panting against the couch. Soon enough, he regained himself, his hips ceasing their twitching, his thighs ceasing their trembling.

“Thank you,” Lenny said, in a tiny, weak voice. His blue eyes snapped back open and looked right into hers. The contact was direct, and honest, and warm. She knew he meant what he said. But then again, when had Lenny ever lied to her?

Seeking that inevitable sense of truth, she sat up straight and asked, “So – was it what you thought it’d be?”

“No,” he admitted. Before her ego could shrivel and die, his open palm rested against her breastbone. “Better than that. You’re like I **dreamed** ,” he said, so sincerely that a lump formed in her throat.

To distract from it, she got playful. “Lenny!” She pinched his skin gently, getting a whine out of him. 

“Uh uh. No takebacks. You’re perfect.” He looked at her then - stared at her – as if he’d learned something magical and new in the process of that morning’s activities. 

“Thank you. You’re…wonderful.” She’d said as much before, but he really was.

He kissed her forehead, then sat back and looked at her. “Hey Laverne – is that why they call this hump day?”

She moaned and smacked him across the brow with her pillow while he horse laughed. By the time he got the pillow away from his face, Lenny giggled, getting up, heading toward the bathroom.

“So,” he said, gathering up his clothes in a pile, “wanna share a shower?”

“Sure,” she said. “But I dunno if we have time for anything sexy…” She hoped they would though. Walking behind Lenny up the stairs, she watched his tush flex and wondered how many rounds he could go in a single morning.

“That’s ok. I’m inflated with what we got,” he said. And to her surprise, he didn’t remark on the sex. “I’m gonna take you bowling on Friday!” and with that, he licked his middle finger, as if still searching for the taste of her on his flesh.

Laverne felt herself shiver with anticipation. True, he had gotten a date out of her - but their bet was at an even score. But they’d talk about that later, she decided.

Much later, she thought, and swept him up into a kiss before kicking the bathroom door closed behind her.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bowling and Herb Alpert and...

Wednesday and Thursday flew by in a daze. Laverne’s heart was doing that hummingbird thing – that infatuated hummingbird thing, to her horror – nearly all the time as she considered what Friday meant. But she buckled down and concentrated on work as much as she could, eating with her father, chugging down cereal – sleeping in a kiddie pool…

She was kind of embarrassed that Lenny knew about that now.

She also avoided deep conversations with her father – and with Rhonda, yet another discussion she wasn’t ready for. If she told Rhonda everything, _Squiggy_ would know, and she’d have to deal with his opinions. Though Squig had always rooted for her and Lenny to get together, he was also notoriously jealous of Lenny’s girlfriends. And Laverne was that now. Technically. Almost. 

She really didn’t want to ask questions at this point. 

Rooting through her closet for something nice to wear, she ended up picking a striped red-and-blue tank top and dark red bellbottoms. She showered and primped for an hour, and only realized later that Lenny wouldn’t have cared had she shown up for their date in sackcloth. 

Her doorbell clanged out a sour note at 7:40 exactly. “I’ve gotta get that fixed,” she muttered, throwing her purse over her shoulder and collecting her bowling ball bag from the floor.

Then frantic knocking ensued, so she charged the door. Lenny was standing there when it opened, in his pink pullover shirt and his jeans, his bowling ball dangling from the tips of his fingers. One hand was hidden behind his back.

“Hey, Laverne,” he said quietly. When he ducked down to shyly kiss her cheek, she leaned up into his lips. His skin smelled fresh and clean, and she could detect the faint odor of Sen-Sen along with his cologne. The shyness he was showing was quite a change from Wednesday morning, when he’d been so bold with his hands, but that was typical of Lenny – little spurts of confidence followed by hours of shame and shyness. He then thrust a handful of pink carnations toward her. “For you.”

“Len,” she smiled, taking them and sniffing them. “The roses you gave me are still alive. You’re gonna go broke giving me a garden here.” 

“It’s okay – they’re from Squig.” She blinked at him in surprise. “Well, he bought them to try to woo Mariah, the girl we got playing the bandana in _Devil’s Bloody Negligee_. She tried to stuff them down his throat.” Lenny shook his head. “The poor little guy’s got strong jaws, but some things a tooth just can’t chew through. Anyway, he said I could give you anything I could save out of his mouth in gravity for my helping him.”  


Laverne winced and held the carnations out at arm’s length. “That’s…” _disgusting,_ she thought, but didn’t say it. It was also possibly the nicest thing Squiggy had ever done for Lenny –but still disgusting. 

“Don’t worry,” Lenny said quickly. “I cleaned them up real nice, just so Squig’s spit wasn’t on them anymore.”

“That’s…thanks.” She took the flowers over to the sink and put them in with the roses – then thoroughly washed her hands. Lenny hovered by the doorway. She looked up – her eyes traced the curve of his chin and caught the glow of his eyes before she asked, “wanna come in?”

“Do you want me to?”

She smiled. “Len. Things ain’t gonna be weird now that we…?”

He shrugged and smiled, rubbing his shoulder. “Nah. I just don’t wanna push my luck.” 

She winced as she remembered the mixed signals she’d been giving him – asking him to give her space to think, then giving him a handjob within hours of the edict. Making him come again in the shower, right after he’d fingered her again. Thinking had never been her strong suit when it came to men, and it had clearly infected her behavior toward Lenny. “You’re not,” she promised, and gave him a little room to enter the apartment. “Wanna beer? A soda?”

He shook his head, and didn’t step out of the hallway. “Nah, I’m good to go. Squig just cashed us out for the week, so I got money if you…”

“Len, It’s 1968. I can pay for myself.” He pouted at that edict, but took it in stride. 

“Okay. Wanna take the bus or can I drive?”

“Yeah,” she got her keys and jacket as they left the house. “Let’s go!”

*** 

The drive was a short one, and Lenny became more comfortable and talkative in the truck. He told her about the old folks and kids he’d waited on during the day, about the money he and Squiggy had gotten together for _The Devil’s Bloody Negligee_ and the successful auditions they’d put together. They might be real film producers in a couple of years, even if the finished product only ended up playing a couple of local drive-ins and revival houses. Laverne felt herself loosen up, and told Lenny all about Chuck’s antics during the workday. She continued animatedly explaining everything as they entered the bowling alley, rented their shoes, and got a lane.

“…And then he poured all of my leftover spacefood sticks into his soup and said ‘hot lunch coming through!’. That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen…CHUCK!” she squawked, and hid behind Lenny.

Lenny’s brow knit with confusion. His eyes flew toward the bowling alley, where a fluffy head of hair popped into view. She didn’t know if Lenny could see Chuck’s bowling shirt, but he was dressed for bowling night – complete in an outfit dotted with mathematical equations in blue text. He’d mentioned Ajax had a bowling team, but she’d been too busy to join – and had no idea which night they played. “Whatcha scared about, Laverne? It’s just Chuck…oh!” He stood up a little straighter, giving Laverne more room to hide behind him. 

“He gossips as bad as you do,” she said.

“Hey!” Lenny protested.

“Sorry, but all we gotta do is be together in front of him and his little greasy wheels will start turning. Everyone at Ajax already knows you held my hand in the truck.”

“Huh, really?” She leaned into his back. “Wanna go somewhere else?”

Laverne considered the situation. She looked up, the bright red satin of Lenny’s jacket filling her eyes. She saw the white L she’d carefully sewn into place there so many years before and her heart sped up. Laverne’s vow to do what was best for her galvanized her. What did she have to be ashamed of? “Nah. Nah, forget it! We’ve got as much right to be here as he does!”

“Okay,” Lenny said. He tried to take a step forward and she thudded into his shoulder. “Laverne. You gotta let go a little bit.”

“Oh!” She’d grabbed a handful of his jacket when she’d noticed Chuck, without any form of intent. “Sorry, Len.”

“S’ok. You’re always grabbing me by the L’s anyway,” he said.

“…I ain’t gonna ask you what that means,” she said, but kissed him quickly between the shoulderblades before she could stop herself.

Together, they headed into the belly of the alley and staked out their lane. She watched the pins rack up, and Lenny took his customary position marking off their frames. Laverne hadn’t bowled once since they’d come to Burbank four years before, and so she was rusty, though not as clumsy as when she’d bowled stoned out of her gourd on cold medicine. Lenny actually managed to knock more down than she did for the first two set-ups, and he was not shy about being smugly proud over beating one of Milwaukee’s best bowling champions.

“Eat my lust, Laverne,” he said, sticking out his tongue and crossing his eyes, just so she’d pick up he was kidding. 

_I will tonight,_ she thought to herself. “Y’know what they say about braggers, Len,” she said instead. The next four frames she led him, which evened the total score out nicely.

She blew a raspberry at him while the pins were set up for the final frame. He pouted at her.

“Y’know,” he whispered, “if you keep being mean this ball’s the only thing I’m gonna stick my fingers into tonight.”

“You were mean first!” she said; but squirmed in her seat, remembering his hands and what they could do to her and how well he took instruction.

“Yeah,” he said, shrinking back a little. “I guess I’m just flowing with the spirits of composition.”

She reached over to rub his shoulders. “It’s okay. We all get a little caught up sometimes.” She headed to the ball return and snagged hers.

“Watch this,” she said. And as always, he was eager to see her succeed, leaning forward in her chair – expecting a trick shot. She’d been hoping to get a full strike this time.

Unfortunately she wasn’t looking where she was going. She didn’t see Chuck coming right toward her with a plastic tray filled with beer for his teammates. 

Or to smack him right in the nose with her bowling ball, which then crashed unceremoniously through the wooden floor.

*** 

“I’m so sorry, Chuck.” 

They had convened at the Melrose Diner, just a few doors down from the bowling alley, after being kicked out of Paradise Lanes by a very tall and very angry bald man. Laverne didn’t want to know how much she’d cost herself financially, but knew she’d rue this part of the day soon enough, no matter how much money Lenny offered to kick in.

“It’s OK!” Chuck said, chipper in spite of the large block of ice he was holding to his nose wrapped up in paper towels. Indeed, he seemed no worse the wear at the moment, though Laverne could already see the ugly purple bump forming on his face. “I’ve been hit with bigger, heavier things in my lifetime.”

_Don’t ask_ Laverne begged herself mentally. She paused and shrugged. Well, she wasn’t shocked. “Yeah, I guess we all have.”

“Sure you don’t want a ride to the hospital?” Lenny asked.

“Nah, I’ll be okay after a week,” Chuck said. “The last time I got this bruised up Little Chucky threw a tantrum ‘cause we were out of his favorite kind of Animal Crackers and he hit me in the face with one of his toy trucks. My nose was out of joint for a while, but I got better.”

Lenny shot her a confused look, but Laverne shook her head. Telling him she’d babysat for a chimpanzee while he and Squig were out of town at a minnow convention felt like too tall of an order this time of night.

“Well, I’m gonna get back to the guys – offer still stands to join us, Laverne,” he said.

“I’ll think about it. See you in work Monday,” she told Chuck. 

She waved him goodbye, then finished off her burger. Lenny was smiling at her as he popped a French fry into his mouth.

“You’re so good with people like that.”

“Nah. I just know how to treat people the way they like to be treated.” She shrugged. But then she thought of the multiple times she’d been less than kind to Lenny in the past, even when it hadn’t been a hundred percent warranted. 

“Yeah,” Lenny said. He sucked on his shake until it made a soft, oxygen-rich sound that suggested he’d hit bottom. “So um…you busy later?”

Only Lenny would ask her if she was really free for the sex appointment they’d made. “Yeah, your place, right?”

“Yeah. It’s the only place with a bed,” he retorted. 

A little shiver ran up her spine. It was really going to happen – she was going to have full-out sex with this man (she had to resist calling it vodeo-do-doing with him, as she would’ve thought of it nine years ago). She wanted it – didn’t know why she wanted it – and was petrified that it would go badly. It was Lenny – he would forgive her for a weird noise or a drooly faux pas. But still, she wanted to be at her best. It was the first time she'd been nervous about sex in years.

He insisted on paying the check, in spite of her protests. That settled, they took a long time walking back to the ice cream truck, enjoying the warm night and what was left of the shakes.

“Uh…can you stay the night?” Lenny asked. “Squig’s gonna be gone til the afternoon – he told me he was going up to Carmel to interview ‘some stacked broad.’” He shook his head. “I think that’s the lady who wanted to invest in the movie.”

Laverne cringed. “Are you sure you want him to do that alone?”

“Oh yeah – Squig knows what he’s doing. He’s a smart little guy,” Lenny said.

Laverne wondered, sometimes, but Squignowski was doing better than anything Lenny and Squiggy had ever put together before. So she had to trust Lenny’s instincts in the matter.

“He don’t mind that you stayed behind?” 

“Not really – I told him I was gonna steam-clean Jeffery. He just told me to make sure I polished his moth jar.” Lenny snorted. “Like he ever cared about that.”

She gave him a little smile as she headed to the door of the truck. “Thanks for not telling him, Len.”

“Of course. Whatt’d you think I’d tell him?” Lenny asked. “We said we’re gonna see how it goes and I ain’t gonna line-step.”

“Well…good. It ain’t like we’re labeling what we’ve got,” she said. 

“Good,” he snorted. “’Cause I dunno what we are, Laverne.”

She frowned, sucking thoughtfully on her bottom lip. “We’re…” what was the modern term for what she and Lenny had? She slid into the truck and when she looked back at him he was watching her with an almost desperate intensity in his eyes. “ _Together,_ ” she concluded, and buckled in. 

“Yeah,” Lenny agreed quietly. “I guess we are.” He couldn’t keep the affection out of his gaze and to be frank she didn’t want him to. 

The drive home was quieter, filled with contemplation, and when they walked to his front door he asked, “Can you wait for a little bit?”

“Sure,” she said. Lenny ducked briefly into the apartment, and she heard a series of rustling and crashing noises. She sighed and played with her purse strap. 

_What if he wrote you another song?_ she asked herself. Did she want that? Was it too much, too soon?

The door flew open and he ducked his head through. “C’mon in.”

Laverne took a first cautious step over the borderline, and then walked into the boys’ apartment. She heard Lenny slip the door closed behind her and lock it.

It looked…well, like his apartment, but slightly cleaner, the lights dimmed. On the card table he’d set out several candles and lit them, and as she could hear music coming, tinny but warm, from his cheap hi-fi. 

Then her eyes lit upon the bed, and she was shocked to both note that the top bunk was freshly-made and that the sheets and blanket on it seemed to be new and clean.

“Aww, you got new sheets for me?”

“Yeah,” Lenny said. “I told you – you deserve the best,” he said. He winced and patted the bunk. “They didn’t really start out blue, but Squig tossed his jeans in with my load, so…”

“Oh,” Laverne said. 

He cocked his head toward the hifi. “Wanna dance?”

She knew what dancing with Lenny usually resulted in – bruised toes, injured calves. She’d never slow-danced with him before. But, well. “Why not?” she asked. 

Laverne’s right arm went around Lenny’s neck, and her left around his back. He placed both of his hands around her waist, and pulled her into the right step.

To her amazement, he managed not to bruise her by mistake. Instead, Laverne felt herself relax, moving with him, soothed and a little excited by the contact. She pressed her head against his chest and let herself move off-beat to Herb Alpert. Let all of the tension and questions eke out of her nerves, until there was nothing but him holding her tight and like this, forever.

She pulled back a little, as the Tijuana Brass segued into something new, and looked up into Lenny’s face. His eyes had been closed - they drifted back open and regarded her with quiet fondness. 

Laverne had to boost herself up a couple of inches for his kiss, but it was worthwhile. Lenny’s lips were still soft, his tongue shy, but his hands tightened around her, pulling her closer this time. Laverne kissed him until his tongue quested into her mouth, until he pushed her flush against him, grinding unsubtly against her. 

When they broke apart, she let go of him to reach for the zipper on her top. 

He stood there and gawked as she got down to her black lace bra. She looked up into his eyes and promptly unclipped her own bra.

“You’ve seen me naked before,” she said, blushing at Lenny’s obvious appreciation of her body.

“Yeah,” he said. “But…” He made a helpless sound and sank to his knees.

Laverne stood still in the middle of the room, trying not to melt into Lenny as he kissed her forehead, each eyelid, each cheekbone, her chin, and up and down her neck. His mouth landed at her breastbone and he inhaled the perfume she’d dabbed on hours before. She tangled her fingers up in his hair as he kissed his way leftward, across her breast and toward its nipple.

Her fingers went stiff against his skull as he sucked her right into his mouth, his tongue teasing lightly against her flesh.

Laverne hung onto him – she realized suddenly he’d cupped her behind and was using it to hold her still, pinned against his mouth. She relaxed into his grip – he might not be able to pick her up, but he could hold her up. 

He switched between breasts rapidly, the heat of his breath sending thrills up her spine. She murmured his name occasionally, yelps of surprise and excitement escaping her every time he sucked harder or teased her with his teeth.

The heat built in her, making her feel warm and wet without his even sending a hand or his tongue below her beltline. Eventually her knees buckled. “Len, I can’t…”

He pulled back with a reluctant moan and looked up at her. His eyes were bright blue and alive with passion. “Can you get back to the bed?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. Her knees continued to buckle, and he got to his feet behind her, just to make sure she could take the short jaunt. She rested against the support pose of the bed – her tingling, stinging nipples still hard and jutting out from her breasts. 

Lenny walked her over to the bed and pressed her back against its post. She couldn’t help but notice the pink tinge of his skin in the candlelight – the obvious bulge in his jeans. She reached for her belt, and together they helped her squirm out of her bellbottoms. His big hands skimmed them down her thighs, and then reached up for her panties. While he helped her out of her pants and shoved them in the corner of the room, she somehow she managed to get out of her sneakers without breaking her neck.

He paused then. She watched him watch her, his expression flitting between abject lust and affection.

And bit his palm. The bulge in his pants, she noted, had gotten even more prominent.

Laverne had no idea what made her spread her thighs apart as he approached, doffing his pink pullover and teeshirt in a single gesture. He fell to his knees before her and kissed her belly, skipping her breasts entirely this time. To slide his mouth lower he had to sit between her thighs, but he did it. 

Laverne peeked down to see him kiss her mons just once, almost impulsively, before ducking down a little and sending the flat of her tongue across her lips.

This was a treat few men had given her. Usually only the ones who really cared would try. The last had been Sonny, bless his heart, and his earnest fumblings had her making excuses that kept his more skilled fingers at work in and on her sex. She would, she realized, have no such problems with Lenny.

She pressed her palm flat to the top of his Brylcreem-covered head and rocked up into his mouth as he lapped her from opening to clit, then swiped the flat of his tongue across it. Her nerves danced and fired, making her want to scream. When he tried it again, she almost lost her balance and kneed him in the jaw. 

“Len, I can’t…”

He pulled back, his lips shiny and his eyes warm. “On the bed?”

Laverne’s legs were like spaghetti – it took Lenny gently giving her a boost up onto his bunk to get her where she needed to go. She sprawled out stomach-down on the sheets.

“Scoot down a little. Put your knees on the posts,” he told her, and she did it. “There we go.” Laverne wondered how Lenny had figured this little position out – who he’d tested it with – and felt jealousy prickle along her spine. But then she realized she’d put herself on perfect display for him – and made it easy enough for him to duck his head right down and press his face between her legs.

She heard him mumble something that sounded like “yummy” before diving back in. And even though the position meant eating her upside-down, he figured out his bearings quickly enough.

Laverne squeezed a handful of sheets and bit her bottom lip to keep herself from groaning too loudly. She doubted Rhonda could hear them from that distance, but the last thing she wanted was the starlet’s full attention, even if she did know and even might encourage exactly what Lenny and Laverne were doing. 

And Lenny knew what he was doing with Laverne, to her, and why she was almost biting the sheets. Doing everything but directly stimulating her clit, then flicking his tongue against it.

The world was filled with sound – the bedframe squeaking, Lenny’s heavy breathing, the audibly wet motion of his mouth stimulating her, her own moans. Laverne reached back and pinned Lenny to her by his head. He sucked her clit between his lips and flicked his tongue over it, his big hands holding her still by grabbing at her calves.

Laverne came and lost her grip on his head – bucked hard back into his face and rode it until she felt the flat of Lenny’s hands come down on her bottom. She squawked and went still – she felt him pull back and then his hand returned, his fingers wet, as one entered her gently, then another.

The second orgasm built much more slowly and seemed to take forever, drawing itself out of Laverne’s trembling form as if being pressed from her very soul. When it finally crested she made a low, thick sound of pleasure and shuddered violently. He stopped for just a minute, his fingers leaving her, and dimly in the middle of it all, she heard a zipper unfastening and his jeans hitting the ground – then his boots hitting the wall and a stumbling noise. 

“Are you okay?” she managed.

“Uh-huh,” he breathed. Then his fingers were again gently pumping inside of her, and reason fled for another glorious six minutes. 

This time, as she lay trembling and flat against the bed, Laverne could feel the frame sway again. Lenny licked his way across the divide of her sex, pausing to nuzzle between her buttocks, his tongue poking curiously between them and making her yelp, then dragging his tongue up her spine. He finished by kissing the back of her neck.

Laverne rolled over under Lenny’s form. He was shiny-faced, his blue eyes gleaming in the candle light.

“Hi,” he said calmly.

She snorted and rolled him over, accidentally bumping Lenny’s head against the wall and making him cringe in pain.

She quickly cupped the back of his head and patted it. “Sorry, Len.”

“It’s okay. It ain’t the only time I’ve bumped my head against that wall.” 

She kissed his forehead in response. Going about returning the kisses he’d bestowed on her so lovingly, she made her way to that sensitive point at the side of his neck, the one that made his jaw drop and his body stiffen in paroxysm of joy. She nibbled him there deliberately until he started writhing against the edge of the frame.

Then she pressed the tip of her thumb curiously against his right nipple. Lenny’s body had been love-starved for years – every part of him was sensitive because of that. He reacted as if she’s electrocuted him, his hips bucking up hard enough to nearly bounce her off the bed.

“Easy there, Len,” she whispered. “I’m still not a trampoline act.”

He chuckled, a sound he choked on as she leaned close and experimentally licked the nipple she’d teased. Laverne kissed her way down his belly and promptly ran out of bed space to do what she wanted to do.

“Let me know if I kick you,” she said, and barely managed to turn around and sit up and swing her leg over his body and settle down. It wasn’t the most graceful position – nearly a sixty-nine – but Lenny didn’t seem to mind the view. And she knew he definitely didn’t mind the access it gave her to his cock, which she proceeded to lick from base to head while he gasped 

Laverne liked blowjobs – giving them made her feel sexy, like she was in control of the act and the pleasure bestowed. At least until they went on for too long, making her jaw ache or were too rough, choking her and making her nose run. She wished she could see Lenny’s face as he gasped and mumbled her name, and the tip of her tongue traced circles about the head of his cock. His hand spread out, tentative, against her upper calf. Laverne took her time – took him into her mouth very slowly, then all the way down her throat.

Lenny was wheezing somewhere by her feet. As she sucked on him, she felt his legs flex against her elbows but he ignored the obvious impulse to buck into her throat. She would reward his patience soon.

For the moment, she busied herself with varying her rhythm on him, trying to lavish her attention where it was most needed – the sensitive tip of him and the long vein leading down the shaft. He was thick and hot – she could imagine how he’d feel inside of her and a pleasant shiver ran along her spine. Laverne wished she could do more than gently rub his balls, but that would set him off like a volcano, and she wasn’t leaving this apartment until she’d ridden him.

Lenny was babbling somewhere behind her. “Laverne? Laverne! How’dyou want me to…” He trailed off and bit her right big toe, and between that and the increasing throbbing of his shaft she knew he was close. She let him go with a reluctant final kiss.

Laverne almost slipped off the mattress trying to turn around. Facing him again, she kissed Lenny’s birthmarks, his nipples, the missing tip of his thumb, his cheeks, and finally his mouth. The kiss he gave her was frantic, and flavored of her own sex, but Laverne groaned and tried to kiss him back, harder and more firmly. His cock was wet and slippery against her thigh as she straddled his hips. 

Lenny’s hand shook as he reached down to position himself. It flashed through her mind how heavy the moment must be for him – how long he’d wanted to do this with her. She propped herself over him on her palms, looking down into Lenny’s eyes. His blue gaze was steady and his eyes were wide as he nuzzled himself between her lips and she leaned forward and carefully slid down on him, until he was fully inside of her.

Lenny’s pose was one of ecstatic surrender as he arched his neck, his eyes slamming shut. “Jeeze, Laverne,” Lenny remarked through his nose, and tried to hide his face against her shoulder. She flexed around him, squeezing him tight in response and he groaned, head clonking back against the wall again. 

“You gotta stop doing that,” she scolded, and rubbed the side of his face. 

“Sorry. You got an effect on me.” His voice was suspiciously thick, emotional, and she kissed him softly. One of his hands cupped her behind, and she moved her left hand to his chest to get better leverage. Then she began to rise and fall against him, trying to stay patient and move slowly, but quickly losing that personal battle.

It was fun, she thought to herself suddenly. Fun to ride Lenny, fun to feel him fill and slightly stretch her open, fun to rise and fall and have all of that thrilling friction against her inner walls. The slippery sounds they made every time he hit bottom inside of her. The way the slight curve of his cock stroked against exciting places she’d never known she’d possessed. It felt good. And, from the ardent moans coming from him, Lenny had to be enjoying it too.

“Do it for me,” he said suddenly. She had no idea what he meant and frowned, pausing and squatting down until he was fully inside of her again. 

“Do what?”

“Y’know…” He wiggled his brows and his eyes trailed from her breasts down between her legs. “Do I gotta draw you a sign?”

But she got it. “Oh. You want me to play with myself?”

“Yeah,” he growled.

“Why?” But her free hand was sliding down between her legs. Her clit was still firm, she knew she was ready to come again – four times, geesh, that had to be a record – but it was an altruistic thing to ask at a time like this one.

“’Cause it’s sexy. And you’re sexy all the time, but especially when you come.”

That was the sweet Len she knew. And so she stroked herself, once and Lenny groaned at the sight. He began to meet her motions, his eyes drifting shut. The faster she moved, the freer she felt – and the more tightly he held on, to anchor her to him, and to the bed.

But she felt free – safe in his arms, but allowed to express her wildness. He’d protect her – from anything, or at least he’d try to. When she came it was on a choked grunt, and she slammed down and allowed herself to enjoy the feeling of being incredibly full of him while she pulsed and throbbed, her body rippling as sweat dripped down her cleavage.

Lost in the heaven of her orgasm, Laverne had no time to react when Lenny suddenly rolled her underneath him, a hand behind her head, the other grabbing the edge of the mattress. 

His strokes were firm and, when she opened her eyes, she noticed how intense his expression was. Laverne shifted to cradle Lenny between her legs and pulled them up around his waist, her hand finding the middle of his back and tracing his sweaty spine. As his deep, even strokes gained intensity, she suddenly realized why he’d crammed his hand behind her head – to protect her head from the wall while they made love.

Lenny’s tenderness undid her. It always had, and likely always would, no matter how their ‘feeling out’ period ended. Laverne moved quickly and eagerly up to meet him again. The small amount of space they had to work with kept their connection tight but limited their movements.

“Laverne!” he whined through his teeth, his thrusting turning frantic. They were moving so quickly the bedframe was shrieking its metallic agony, but Laverne didn’t care. She knew she probably wouldn’t come again but desperately wanted him to feel as good as she had. 

“’C’mon, Len,” she encouraged him, her fingers tracing downward, her teeth nibbling his neck.

He made an incoherent sound of pleasure. Deep within her, she could feel him tremor, getting a little bigger. She squeezed down and he gasped, his pelvis pressing hard and strong against her. He managed two more thrusts before making a low, pleasure-filled sound and she felt him throb, felt warmth fill her up.

She opened her eyes and watched him fall apart, an obvious, almost innocent sense of joy showing up in his face. He was beautiful like this – beautiful in his own way. Then he slowly melted over her, shuddering, his hips twitching occasionally as the orgasm worked through his body.

When he raised his head to look at her, she took in the kaleidoscope of emotions in his face – thankfulness, joy, peace and – she couldn’t deny it to herself – love.

And his eyes were a bit teary. She stroked the side of his face. “Len. What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.” Lenny wiped the corner of his eye and kissed her jaw. He settled in against her before making his confession. “My pig flew,” he whispered against her neck, and she shook her head. Laverne kissed the palm of his hand and snuggled closer into his chest. 

Laverne allowed herself to relax. It had been good – more than good, terrific – and Lenny had responded to her beautifully. She felt relieved and delighted. Their bodies worked gloriously – in tandem.

“You swear Squig won’t be coming home tonight?” she asked.

He nodded. “Cross my heart.”

Laverne relaxed into Lenny’s form. She was lying in a growing wet spot, and she had pins and needles in her right hand, but to her it was heaven, a palace, where she belonged. “Good,” she said. As the candles guttered out, she allowed herself to drift to the skipping of a record needle – only to be woken by Lenny’s hands and mouth in the middle of the night, asking if he could touch her.

They could sleep in tomorrow, she reasoned to herself, and straddled his lap again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Laverne's body betrays her.

The sun was high over Laurel Vista when Laverne woke up again. By the light of day, she noticed a few things – that the candles Lenny had burned last night were citronella candles they’d used at their Fourth of July picnic last year. How hadn’t she noticed the smell? She’d been completely swept away – not in an aircraft carrier way, but in a good way, like a princess being carried off on horseback. He’d washed the dishes last night too, and that his battery-operated hifi had run out of juice sometime in the middle of the night. The apartment smelled better than it ever had, looked it too.

Laverne yawned and rolled over – as much as she could roll over, with Lenny clinging to her in his sleep. Her motion woke him –one blue eye popped open, and he lifted his head, a very sweet smile crossing his face.

“Hi,” he said and pecked her lips.

“Hi,” she echoed. Laverne brushed her hand across Lenny’s cheek, feeling five o’clock shadow. The reality of the moment filling her up and making her feel…things she still was afraid to poke at. The kiss deepened a little, and it ended with her nibbling his bottom lip before letting go.

“Len?”

“Mmm?” He murmured. 

“I have to go pee.”

“Aww,” he said, letting her go. Climbing down off a bunkbed naked was a new experience. Laverne tried to avoid shredding her ankles and her knees on the sides of the bunk and dropped to her feet. She knew Lenny was watching her as she retrieved her panties and donned the first shirtlike thing which came to her hand.

Then she paused. Did she actually want to risk going into the boys’ bathroom?

She made her way to the door. “Oh, if you go in there, can you feed Lance?” Lenny asked. “There’s some goat chow under the sink, poor little guy must be starving…”

That settled it. “I’m just gonna go into my place.”

“That’s an awful long way to go just to pee,” said Lenny.

“Len, there are some things a girl’s gotta do without a bunch of creepy eyes on her,” she said, and noticing his pout, “present company excluded.”

“Fine,” Lenny whined. “I wanna change the sheets and grab a shower anyway. Want me to keep the home waters hot?”

Laverne flushed. She knew just why - the sheets and blankets smelled like sex, like the two of them, and it would be better to hide them away lest Squiggy find them. She watched Lenny work naked for a moment, pulling out his old green sheets and blanket from a trash bag he’d had shoved under the bed. 

“I dunno Len. Ain’t it supposed to be 90 today? I mean, what kinda person wants to boil to death like that on a hot day?” 

“Hello!” came a nightmarishly familiar voice from the other side of the front door. A rapid knocking noise was followed by violent rattling. “Lenny! Lenny! Leonard! Don’t tell me you passed out from the steam again?”

Laverne and Lenny froze in place. “Nah!” Lenny squeaked, and then cleared his throat. “I’m just...in here, enjoying the…atmoistphere!” 

“Well hurry up, man! I have news! Splendiferous news!”

“In a minute, Squig! I’m…I’m in the can!” he yelled, then turned beet red and bundled up their shared clothing, shoving it into the garbage bag, then pushing the bag under the bed. He threw the candles back into the supply closet and took the needle off the hifi. 

Laverne snorted. Apparently it was fine to contemplate the notion of her peeing, but the idea of her knowing that he used the bathroom was intolerable. 

“What do we do, Len?” she whispered.

His eyes lit upon the passageway that connected her apartment with his. Quickly, he pushed the door open. “Crawl through,” he hissed. Laverne did as he requested. As she moved through the darkness, the distance between the two apartments seeming endless. 

“Oh good! Be sure to feed Lance…” Squiggy was saying.

“Just uh…gimmie a minute, Squig!” Lenny said. 

“Never mind! I’ll just use the passkey! Now where did we leave it?” Squiggy said.

“Uh…” Lenny’s voice cracked. “Check under the painting in the hall!”

Then she felt the warmth of Lenny’s body behind her and saw the light from the apparent cut off by the closing of the door. And moved faster, until she felt the passage narrow on the other side of the hall and shoved it open, tumbling onto her face onto the floor with a naked Lenny right behind her. 

They took a second to sort themselves out, and she checked him over for bruises – then, realizing they’d managed to make it to the other side intact, they hopped up and down in joyous celebration. 

She shut the door behind them firmly. “Go upstairs, get in the shower,” she whispered.

Lenny nodded eagerly, kissing the back of her hand before jogging there. She saw a flash of tanned legs and his very white behind as he headed through her bedroom. 

Two weeks ago she wouldn’t have let him near her bedroom and now he was going to use her soap. Life, Laverne decided silently, as she tried to scrounge up a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans from the messy pile of clothing she’d quietly shoved behind the couch, was stranger than anything sometimes.

Then a rattling knock sounded at her door. “Hello? Why’s everyone locking their doors all of a sudden? Did I miss something groovy?”

She winced. The word sounded a thousand times less cool when they came out of Squiggy’s mouth. “Squig, it’s Saturday afternoon! I want some privacy here!”

“Laverne, you ain’t needed privacy since you was a tiny tot tapdancing on the street for gum money.”

She rolled her eyes, stuffing her legs into her jeans and zipping them up. She yanked down the hem of her teeshirt, then unlocked and threw open the door. She grabbed Squig by his hair worm and twisted, hard, while he yelled and tried to fight her off.

“Squiggy,” she said, “I’ve got twelve different kinds of freeze-dried French fries to eat in two days. All I wanna do is take a nice afternoon nap in peace. I wanna. Be. Alone.”

“All right! All right! Geeze, I read you loud and foggy!” he pulled out of Laverne’s grip and straightened his jacket. It was bright red, and she couldn’t help but think of him as a very short, very angry demon.

“Good. Why don’t you go down to the drugstore, huh? Get Len some nice uh…candy bars.”

“Yeah, that always helps when he has the runs.” Laverne cringed. “I’ll be gone for a little while. Maybe by then you’ll be in the proper altitude to stomp on over and give him back his shirt.” 

With that remark, Laverne glanced down at the front of her body and realized that she’d donned Lenny’s blue-sleeved baseball teeshirt in her haste. “Uh…sure!” she blurted.

Squiggy shoved a hand into his pants pocket. “Try to make it smell less like you. His mind..wanders. He dreams.”

She tried not to smile as she imagined Lenny having naughty dreams about her. She wasn’t surprised, but she was far more flattered than she would’ve been a few weeks ago. “Got it, Squig. Now get out,” she said, and slammed the door before he could give her more information than she needed to know.

She barred the door behind her, and then jogged upstairs. The closer she got to the bedroom, the louder Lenny’s singing got - “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. She pulled off his shirt and took her jeans off – then stowed her panties on the floor. Naked again, she headed right into the shower.

And caught Lenny right in the middle of the chorus. He cut himself off with a shriek, his sud-covered face and head making him look like a very tall snowman, his hand flying away from his very hard cock.

“Len,” she smiled, ducking in with him, “you sing while you do it to yourself?”

“Not all time,” he said, wincing under her playful smile. “Otherwise I couldn’t play or go out in public or nothing.” She wrapped her arms around his middle and hugged him for all he was worth. “But sometimes when I get going with something and it gets to me, I’ve just gotta uh…express it. The handbite don’t do it all the time.”

“Mmm.” She kissed the middle of his back felt him shiver. She brushed her hand over his belly and up to his chest and wondered at how strong he felt. But then Lenny was a walking contradiction at most times – gentle and volatile, strong and fragile, sweet and filthy.

“Did you get Squig to go?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, and took his cock – heavy, warm and thick – into her grip. “I kind of didn't correct him when he said he thought that you had diarrhea.” 

“Ohh,” Lenny groaned, humiliation and physical pleasure colliding. His knees went inward, but Laverne managed to hold him up. 

“You can probably get back before he’s home with your candy if we make this quick.” She scrubbed his back with one hand, sliding over the rounded curve of his bottom. He nearly squirmed out of her grip as her left hand slid up and began to massage the shampoo out of his hair and her right began to stroke him more firmly.

She remembered a time when she would’ve done anything to avoid touching Lenny’s hair. The Laverne of nine years ago would be horrified to see herself in this shower, fondling him, kissing the back of his neck and watching her hand stroke his cock. But here she was. And she was proud of it.

Lenny leaned forward and braced his hands against the wall. She washed his inner thighs as she hummed against his back – the same melody, now stuck in her head. When he came neither of them were expecting it, and she had to hold him tight and still as he shook. 

She left him to stand under the spray for a second as she quickly washed herself up. By the time she was done, Lenny had caught his breath and was watching her silently.

Laverne locked eyes with him but he turned away. “Vernie?” he mumbled.

“Yeah?”

“I l…” he cleared his throat and his eyes darted in his head. “Lint. Lint is a good word.”

The corner of her mouth tilted up. “Yeah, it is,” she said quietly. She turned off the shower and then Lenny helped her step out onto the bathmat.

She dried his hair and knelt to get the rest of his body and let him rub her dry with his big hands and the aid of a towel. She found herself back in her purple robe, and he put his baseball shirt back on, and borrowed a pair of her jeans – which were rather tight across the crotch and hovered at the middle of his calves.

Laverne didn’t laugh at Lenny over this little issue. He almost didn’t look ridiculous in them – and they really did outline his tushy pretty nicely.

“See you tomorrow?” Laverne asked.

“Sure,” he said. Then, as he crossed her threshold, he asked, “uh, Laverne - when do you want me to put it in your butt?”

_”Lenny!”_

He shrank back a bit. “What? If you didn’t want me to do it to you shouldn’t’ve asked!”

She winced. “Later.” Technically he owed her three fantasies at this point, but she could be patient. And she owed him five dates, but if they were all as entertaining as last night she’d gladly tend to them.

He leaned down and pecked her lips. “Okay. See you,” he said.

“Bye,” she said, and closed the door tight behind her.

*** 

Laverne woke the next morning to niggling cramps and groaned as she checked her calendar. Yep, the 21st – she pulled the flat plastic disc with her pills out of the bedside drawer and checked the used tabs, counting back to her sugar pill. Bingo - her body had responded like clockwork to it as always.

She groaned as she dragged herself through her morning routine, and then shuffled downstairs for breakfast, making a mental note to count the number of pads she had left before work Monday. In the middle of a bowl of Sugar Bombs, she realized she was going to have to break her date with Lenny and groan.

Lousy body. She’d been having so much fun with it, and it had gone and betrayed her.

Some part of her wasn’t ready to admit it, but the rest of her Saturday had admittedly been dull without him. She’d had lunch and dinner, watched a basketball game on TV, and taken Shirley’s routine early evening phone call. The chat had been newsy – filled on Shirley’s end with stories about Bobby, and on Laverne’s end about Chuck and his antics, and what she’d been doing at work. Smoothly, she’d edited Lenny out of the bowling story, and Shirley hadn’t asked any questions about him or Squiggy.

Laverne ran water over the dishes and checked her watch. She had just enough time to get to the bus stop and let it drive her down to the community center, where her songwriting circle was having its weekly meeting.

*** 

“Oh my Gaw,” Sheba – no, Sheila, Sheila Berman – said as the group broke into applause as she finished playing her latest song “Paisley Blue Bummer” for the group. “You guys! You are the most, no really.”

Laverne stopped her clapping as Sheila sat down in a chair next to her. She’d mostly forgiven the blonde bankrobber for nearly getting her killed (just as she’d forgiven Lenny for both being too afraid of her Pop to get her help sooner and eating her out of house and home on that nightmarish day), and the two of them had become distant acquaintances. It was Sheila who had been the one to invite Laverne into the song circle and sponsored her for full membership.

“Laverne,” Merilee, the leader of the circle, said. “Would you like to go last?”

“Aww, sure,” Laverne said, getting out of her chair to stand at the center of the room with her guitar. “I’ve been working on this one for a little while, and I hope you like it.”

Laverne strummed carefully on her instrument. She knew she didn’t have the best voice going, but she was proud of “Washington to Buffalo,” which she’d written about how much she missed Shirley and how hard it had been to accept the distance between them. This time, while her voice still wasn’t going to win her any Grammys, her lyrics were a few cuts above “I’m so Blue, How Are You?”

She made it to the end and paused as the very last note rung out. Applause filled the room of the little rec center – and the loudest came from the doorway. She could make out a blonde-haired shadowed in a blue-sleeved baseball shirt and jeans.

“All right,” Merilee said. “That’s it for this week! Tony, it’s your turn to bring snacks next week.”

The group broke up, released from their chairs and circle, and Laverne made a beeline toward the doorway.

“Len!” she said, her guitar slapping her midsection and setting up discordant notes with every step, “whatt’re you doing here?”

He shrugged. “I was selling ice cream at the kids’ basketball game outside and I heard your voice.”

“Geeze, you could hear me?” she flushed.

“Not in a lousy way! In a good way,” Lenny explained quickly. “You sounded real nice!”

“Thanks,” she said, feeling almost shy. In matters of music, she trusted Lenny’s judgment.

“No way!” Sheba gasped. “YOU’RE Lenny the ice cream man?”

Lenny paused. “Um…yeah?” His eyes darted between their faces.

Laverne flushed and she resisted the urge to punch the young blonde. “Sheila!” 

Sheila gasped. “Oh my GAWD did I totally spill some beans?” 

She had. Laverne had debuted a song by that title in the circle a few weeks back – using Lenny as a songwriting exercise. This was before she’d even thought of touching him, and now…well, she wasn’t ready to share it with Lenny. She’d been considering going back to it and retooling it instead.

Lenny frowned at Sheila, and Sheila frowned right back at him. Laverne shook her head and groaned. A total meeting of the minds was taking place. 

“Hey,” Lenny said, pointing his finger at Sheila. “Ain’t you the girl who was locked up with Laverne? Didn’t me and Squig sell you some pantyhose?”

“Oh yeah! I’m totally wearing them right now!” she stuck out her leg and showed him.

“Oh wow! How’re the seams holding?”

Laverne groaned. “Len, if you’re all done selling your goods all over again, we gotta go.”

“Oh yeah! See you around!” he gave Sheila a salute, and then escorted Laverne outside, holding the door for her. Lenny stowed the guitar in the back of the truck, and she sat in the front with him.

“Laverne,” he teased her at the first light. When she ignored her, he repeated her name over and over, every time they took a corner or stopped at a light.

He was parking the car outside of Laurel Vista when she finally said, “what?”

“You wrote a song about me,” he teased.

“Maybe,” she said, grabbing the guitar by its neck and hopping out, running for the door.

He caught up with her at her front step and kissed her soundly, until her arms went up around his neck and his knee crooked, bride-style.

They broke the embrace and he said, “ain’t you gonna sing it?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Oh,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning downward. “Uh…ready to go out?”

She shook her head. “I can’t do that, either.”

“Aww, you don’t have to sing for me if you really don’t want to.”

“Len, it’s not that. It’s…” He stared at her expectantly. She sighed. “Y’know that thing a girl gets every month?”

“Oh,” he blew a raspberry. “The Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.”

“Len! The other thing!”

He stared at her blankly. _Please, God,_ she mentally threw toward the heavens, _don’t make me have to explain what monthly withdrawal bleeding is. **I** don’t even really know what it is!_

But then realization seemed to hit him like a lightning bolt. “Oh! **Oh!** ” He shrugged. “That’s no big deal. I mean, unless you want me to part your red seas…”

“Lenny!”

“…I’m okay with just hanging around for awhile. I mean, just ‘cause we’re doing it doesn’t mean we’ve gotta **do it** all the time. Y’know I have a big sister. I get that girls bleed a lot and…”

“Len. I get the picture.” Well, even crampy and bloaty, she didn’t want to be without him. “Wanna order a pizza?”

“Sure! Ain’t the Rams game on?” 

“Yeah,” she said. “Just gimmie a minute.” She scattered upstairs to change. By the time she came back, Lenny had the set on.

It was an easy afternoon. They yelled at their favorite team and slugged down pizza and beer. But Lenny had always been easy to be with that way.

Before she knew it, it was almost eleven. He yawned and stretched beside her, arm drifting easily around her back. “So uh…can I sleep here tonight?” He widened his eyes, begging a bit. “Squig’s gone til tomorrow ‘cause he doesn’t want to ‘catch my plagiarizing’ so if you don’t, I’ll just go…”

“Nah, you can stay,” she said.

“Good. I’ll just…be your heating pad,” he said. He kicked off his motorcycle boots and stretched out on the couch, letting Laverne take her position in his comfortable grip.

He really did make a nice heating pad, and the warmth of him seeped into her flesh easily. And it was really nice to know that the friendship part of their relationship hadn’t died due to the sex. The really, really good sex.

Laverne hated her body _so_ much.

By the middle of the evening they were spooning together, watching an old movie on the set. “Hey?” He asked out of the blue. He thunked his chin down atop her head. “Laverne?”

“Mm?” she fit her face into the crook of his neck and sighed.

“Do you want me to get you another beer?”

She froze perfectly still in his arms as her heart nearly leaped out of her chest. “Nah,” she said. “I’m not thirsty.”

“Okay,” Lenny said. He pulled the afghan over their bodies, then paused and took her arm in his hand. “You cold?”

“Huh?”

“Cold,” he said. He rubbed her right arm gently. “You got goosebumps all over.”

Laverne’s eyes popped open. “Um. Nah. It’s no big deal, night, Len.”

“Okay. Goodnight,” he mumbled. 

She stared at the traitorous bumps on her arm for hours that night, long after he fell asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, "Hand Job at Cowboy Bills" is not a Lenny and the Squiggtones song.

She woke up with her face buried in Lenny’s chest, feeling his body jerk gently with a series of wheezy snores. 

Her right hand traveled down his arm and she had to wiggle gently out of his grip. “Len. I gotta get up for work.”

“Mmmph,” he mumbled, and tightened his arms around her. “No. Stay here.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve gotta check my uh…”

“Oh yeah,” he said, and let her go. For a minute, he watched her shuffle upstairs, then busied himself with getting rid of their takeout trash. It was kind of him to do, and after she’d taken a quick shower and changed into her work clothes, she pecked him a thank-you.

“Any time,” he said. “I’m gonna be in Angel Beach all day, but maybe we could go out to Cowboy Bills’ together?”

Laverne’s spine stiffened at the question. “I dunno, Len. We’ll have to explain everything to my Pop…”

Confusion wrinkled his brow. “Like what?” Lenny asked. “We go out and eat there all the time, and he never thought we were porking under the table…”

“Lenny!”

“What?” he asked, his blue eyes innocent and wide. 

She groaned. “Can you pretend we aren’t…y’know…what we are?”

“Sure,” he said. “Helps that even I still don’t know what we are,” he said. With a groan he got up off the sofa. “If you can’t make it, I should be back by six.”

“Okay.” She reached up for his comforting kiss, which lingered long enough for him to gently trace her shape with his big, open palms. She shivered at the sensation, but now was not the time for sexy thoughts.

*** 

“I’m telling you Laverne, if Spock and Uhura don’t kiss at least once, then there’s no justice in the whole world.”

The words made her look right up from her space food and dissolved the mental back-and-forth she’d been indulging in all day. “What?”

“Star Trek,” he said with a firm nod of his head. “Uhura’s….never mind, you look pained. Can I help?”

She shook her head. The idea of explaining to Chuck that she’d been thinking about the goosebumps Lenny had given her simply by holding her tight last night and offering her beer was anathema of their whole working relationship. But Chuck was a nice guy, kind and sweet, and currently her only real friend at Ajax. “Can I ask you a weird question?”

“I suppose so, but no question is weird when science is involved,” he said.

She hesitated for a moment before saying, “Have you ever had special feelings for a friend that you never had before?”

He paused, his eyes widening. Then he gently took her hand between his. “Laverne, that’s very flattering, but my only love is the cosmos…”

She pulled her hand away from his. “Chuck, it ain’t you!”

“Well, excuse me!” He shook his head at her offended posture and tone. “But no, I can’t say I’ve ever had those sorts of feelings suddenly change for me. But I’m a very logic-driven person.”

She squinted. “You live with a zoo.”

“Animal companionship helps a person live longer! Thus: logic,” Chuck said. “All right, Laverne- even though I don’t have the experience you crave, my best suggestion is that you follow your feelings. I know you’ll make the right choice.” 

Well, she’d been following them – and other parts of her anatomy – on this pied piper’s journey into lust with Lenny. But that didn’t explain the appearance of those damnable goosebumps. “Thanks, Chuck.”

“No problem,” he said. With that, she turned back to her space s’mores. 

*** 

Laverne had intended to get a bus back to Laurel Vista to pick up Lenny, but instead she spotted him in the parking lot selling ice cream again. Their eyes locked and he gave her a crooked grin, then opened the door of the truck and let her in.

“You got good timing,” he said. “I just ran out of Nutty Buddies.”

“Good,” she said. 

“Wanna stop home to change?”

“Nah,” she said. He’d changed into a pullover and a fresh pair of jeans sometime between leaving her place and going out. As Lenny stepped to the front of the truck he caught her looking and wiggled his eyebrows. 

“Remind me to bring your jeans back,” he said, and headed out of the lot.

The drive to Cowboy Bills was brief, and they filled the conversation with discussion of their day. Apparently _The Devil’s Bloody Negligee_ had its cast and half of its funding, so there was some hope that maybe they’d start “Victoria Principal Photography,” to quote Squiggy. Laverne kind of wanted to watch this all happen, but she had her doubts the boys would make it into full fledged production.

They headed into the restaurant, and her father greeted Laverne warmly and ignored Lenny as he started playing with the mint dispenser they had on the reservation desk. 

“Think we could get a booth this time, Pop?” Laverne asked. She wanted all the privacy her father’s restaurant could afford, which wasn’t much.

“Sure, sure…” 

“Can we see some menus?” Laverne asked – though at this point she’d memorized everything Cowboy Bills had to offer at this point.

“Yeah! We just got the new ones back from the printer! Big and laminated!” He bustled off and brought them back while Laverne and Lenny slid into place side by side in the booth

Her father returned with two menus, and they were surprisingly big – enough to shield their faces from probing gazes. “I’ll send Mary by in a couple of minutes.”

Once he was out of sight, Laverne leaned as close as she dared to Lenny and pretended to share a single menu. They really were big; they were pretty thoroughly protected.

“I don’t know how your Pop feels about me sometimes, Laverne,” Lenny said. His eyes were pretending to scan the menu while he leaned in close to her, conspiratorial.

“Well, lemme put it this way – he likes you better than Squiggy.”

Lenny let out a little gasp, his features showing his pride. Her heart melted and bubbled with affection and tenderness. She wanted to peck him on the cheek – and realized suddenly she could give him a different sort of affection.

After taking a quick look around, she let her hand slip from the menu under the table, and brushed against Lenny’s knee.

Slowly, her hand traversed denim, wandering up his thigh and over to Lenny’s lap. She felt him go tense under her touch, but rubbed down his bunched muscles gently.

His eyes darted toward her face. “Laverne?” he squeaked out.

“Shh…” Jerking Lenny off under a table at her father’s restaurant wasn’t exactly either romantic or particularly erotic, but it also fulfilled a fantasy she’d always had. She would just have to pretend she couldn’t hear her Pop yelling in the kitchen.

Which was going to be a tall order. Part of her worried this was a total mistake, but she wanted to make Len happy.

“You owe me,” she whispered teasingly, and she watched his adam’s apple bob. “Just hold on to the menu.”

He nodded eagerly as she teased him through the denim with extremely light, stroking touches. Lenny bit his bottom lip and she noted he was trying to avoid making noises or squirming too much. By the time she slipped his zipper down she had to inch it over his hard-on and said hard on had actually managed to move said zipper a few notches down before she attempted it.

“Jeeze,” he muttered through his teeth when she fished him out of the fly of his boxers and gently began to stroke him.

“Is it too dry?” she asked. He was already dripping pre-come, and she was using that to lubricate her motions. He shook his head frantically. “You have to tell me when you’re getting close,” she said, then kissed his neck. She knew how far he could shoot, and no way was she going to risk getting come all over the underside of the table. 

Lenny nodded frantically. It didn’t take long for him to get hotter and stiffer in her grip, and she listened to his choppy breathing, watched his face turn redder, saw him hunch closer to the menu to hide the effect she was having on him. But his face was expressive – she knew. Laverne’s other hand clutched at the menu, and Lenny’s hands were shaking his ever so slightly.

Then he grabbed her thigh abruptly under the table, holding on to the menu with white knuckles in his other hand. She freed her other hand and got a wad of napkins under the table just in time. By the skin of her teeth, she managed to catch it all in her open palm. She didn’t stop stroking until he stopped dripping, and then gently wiped the tip of his cock before letting it go.

For want of a better place to shove them, Laverne wadded up the napkins and put them in her purse, a gesture she would likely regret by the end of the evening but the most sensible one she could make at the moment. She checked her hands and though they were a little damp, they were none the worse for wear from her misadventure. 

Then she turned her attention back to Lenny, kissing his chin and cheek behind the menu, trying to calm him down. Lenny leaned into her shoulder and tried to even out his breathing – she fanned his red cheeks until he he’d calmed and was able to sit back with a groan. By the time Mary came around to ask them what they wanted, he looked as normal as he ever would.

“Can you give us fifteen?” Laverne asked. Mary shrugged and headed off to tend to her other tables, looking perplexed; how could they not know the menu? The two of them waited tables at the restaurant for the past four years. But Mary, bless her, knew enough not to ask the Milwaukee contingent questions about their behavior.

As soon as Mary was gone, Lenny put down the menu and reached under the table to pack himself back into his pants. “What was that for?” he whispered.

She shrugged. “I wanted to make you feel good, y’know, because I can’t…”

“Hey,” he said softly, “you don’t have to do that to me just ‘cause you think...”

“No, I really wanted to make you happy,” she said. “Besides, I always wanted to do something like that, so it’s one fantasy down.”

“You wanted to whack a guy off in one of your father’s restaurants?!” Lenny asked, eyes wide.

“No, but…in public. Somewhere.” She’d completely forgotten that they could’ve been caught by far too many people they knew, and it was less of a turn on than an excuse for sneakiness.

Sneakiness also factored into Lenny’s expression – his eyes darted back and forth, and he snuck his right hand under the table. It was warm and gentle as he massaged her knee and made his way northward.

“Lenny!” Her eyes darted toward the kitchen. Miraculously, no one seemed to be coming toward them, and she ducked back down behind the menu. “We can’t! Not here.”

“Why not?” he whined. “You did it to me!”

“But that’s…” well, it was different, if only because she was the one pulling on his cock, and thus in control of everything, able to keep an eye out for trouble. If she took leave of herself, no way would Lenny have as sharp an eye.

She looked over to see him pleading with her with those puppydog eyes of his. “Argh,” she remarked.

“Please, Laverne? I’ll make you feel real nice.”

She no longer had any form of resistance to that suggestion – she knew for a fact he knew how to do it. “Can you watch out for Mary or my Pop?”

“Sure,” Lenny said. His rubbing became more focused, and he seemed to be concentrating on nudging Laverne’s thighs apart. She separated her legs as he slid his hand upward and cupped her gently. 

Part of Laverne was incredulous and afraid of the consequences; part of her wanted to just give in to her hormones. “Are you sure we can do this?”she asked, and regretted the question he moment she posed it.

Lenny shrugged. “I dunno, I ain’t done it with my right hand before.” He was now massaging her with his open palm, the motion gently rubbing her labia minora against her clitoris.

“Len!”

“Relax,” he urged her. Then he leaned in conspiratorially. “I can’t put them in you,” Lenny whispered, “but I can rub you just the way you like. Does that make you wet? Make you really hot?” 

He was right. He was rubbing her exactly the way she liked. Laverne’s thighs stiffened around Lenny’s palm and she started to hunch as subtly as humanly possible against his rubbing. All she could manage was a nod.

“Do you wish you didn’t have no underwear on?” She did, but she thought he knew that. “I can picture you walking around without them on. And no one else would know but you and me. I could just reach up and put my hand there any time you wanted…”

That was a tempting mental picture. Laverne had always had a streak of exhibitionism in her – a streak that had gone horribly wrong on that aircraft carrier – and the idea of showing off for Lenny sounded like fun. 

“I could pick you up at work and we could do it in the front of the truck – or I could take you to the tar pit. Just you and me and the dinosaurs…” In the cloudy fog of her arousal Laverne heard his joke and laughed, gasping as his rubbing grew more intense. “And me making you come over and over again. Y’like that, Laverne?”

She bit her bottom lip and let out a nasal sound of pleasure. He kissed her cheek, and his hand moved faster. “Shhh…” He watched her with his bright blue eyes. “I wonder how many times you can come in a row…”

“Len…” He’d better not try to find out while they were there.

“Some day I gotta know. I know how you taste and how you smell and what you feel like but I need to see how many times I can get you to cream.” His hand was moving faster in concert with his thoughts. “You’re so sexy when you come. It’s the prettiest thing in the world.”

The flattery and his clever fingertips made Laverne squeeze his hand hard between her legs as she shivered. Head to toe gooseflesh and a muffled groan signaled her orgasm and – predictably – she took leave of her senses. He gently massaged her through the orgasm, and when he stopped she felt a little bereft. 

When she came back to herself, Lenny was there. He kissed her cheek soundly and rubbed her shoulder. “Laverne, you okay? I can’t hold you up like this.”

She listed back onto her bottom – having been completely unconscious of having leaned heavily into Lenny during the orgasm – and tilted her head back for just a second. The world cleared and returned to normal and then she looked at him. Lenny was watching her still, his expression sweet, as if she’d given him the world.

“Did you mean what you said?” she asked. Laverne had no idea what could possibly be in it for Lenny if 

“About making you cream as many times as I can? Yeah. I mean, coming’s one of those things a girl can do about as good or better than a guy, like having a baby or masonry work.” She raised an eyebrow at his digression. “Girls can come a billion times and do it until they get all sore. Me, I can only come three times, four all day if I’m really –“ 

She whined and cut him off. “You can come four times in a day?” Now she _loathed_ her dumb body.

His expression was utterly innocent. “Can’t most guys?”

She moaned and squirmed out of the booth. “I have to go to the ladies’ room. Can you order?”

He squeezed his eyes closed tight and recited from memory, “One Bronco Burger, medium rare, fries on the side, no onions.”

“Right,” she said. How long had Lenny been watching her, mentally recording her likes and dislikes? She realized she could rattle off the same for him, knew easily how to make him laugh or cry. Dropping the menu and the pretense, she took her purse into the ladies’, where she cleaned up and took her time washing her hands before returning to the table.

By the time she’d gotten back, Lenny had two chocolate shakes on the table. He’d been chatting with Mary about something and they’d been laughing casually. Then he saw Laverne, and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile as she approached.

Laverne’s arms sprouted goosebumps.

She was in _so_ much trouble.

***

Miraculously, Frank didn’t remark upon the physical closeness of Lenny and Laverne’s shared presence in the restaurant, shoving the burgers at them, telling them to eat. As was their habit, they picked the food off of each other’s plates, stealing a fry there, a pickle spear there. When they finished up they threw the food onto Laverne’s tab and dashed to the truck together like two little kids who had successfully stolen a candy bar from a drugstore.

They shared one look and burst into laughter. Once they were at the first stoplight she swatted his arm lightly. “Whatt’re you laughing at? I’m probably gonna have to pray three novenas after that one!” A smaller penance than she’d had to do for the whole aircraft carrier mess, but enough.

“You started it!” Lenny pointed out.

“So? You didn’t have to…”

“What? Come all over the place ‘cause of your pretty hands?” Laverne flushed.

“Okay, so it was my fault. At least Pop didn’t notice.”

Lenny sighed his relief. “Yeah. They were pretty big menus.”

She shook her head, watching the headlights bounce off of Lenny’s face, pale streaks of neon highlighting the blond of his hair, the blue of his eyes. He was handsome in a different way from this angle.

“Vernie?” 

“Mmm?”

“Remember when you used to hide behind your fridge door so me and Squig wouldn’t see you naked?”

She punched his shoulder for bringing that up. “I was never naked!”

“Slip, naked – hey, back then it was all the same,” he said. 

“So it’s different now?”

He grinned. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

Once they were safely back at Laurel Vista, he walked her to her front door. He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels while she got the lock open. “Got time on Tuesday? We could go to see Rosemary’s Baby. I heard it’s a great make-out picture!”

“That’d be nice,” she said. Laverne had no idea if this was or not, but she supposed they’d find out. She knew she’d stop on Saturday like clockwork, which meant with a little more time they could get back to what they’d been doing before. Automatically, she reached right up to kiss him and, as always, an innocent make-out resulted in him pressing her right against the wall. It took every last ounce of willpower she had left to part from their shared touch.

Lenny was panting when they parted. “You sure you don’t want someone parting your red sea?”

“Len!” She pushed the door open. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” he said. She leaned against the interior of the door for a long time, trying to process what she’d said and done that night.

Then she looked down at her arm and saw those goosebumps rising up on her skin. “Enough, already!” she muttered at her flesh, trying to shake the tingles from her flesh, but that only made it worse. She sighed and glanced at the clock. Laverne knew she needed to unburden her brain on somebody, but had no idea who to turn to. 

Quickly, she headed over to the bricked-up archway and pried one out. Rhonda wasn’t entertaining anyone – in fact there was a light coming from the living room. She shoved the brick back into place and headed nextdoor.

 _Please don’t make me regret this,_ she threw out to the universe, before ringing Rhonda Lee’s doorbell.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love can be concealed, but it's often revealed.

Rhonda was in full makeup and a pink peignoir when she answered the door, because of course she was. “Laverne! It’s almost ten o’clock, what on earth are you doing at my front door?”

“I…I…ugh,” she groaned. “Rhonda, can I come in for a minute?”

“Why of course!” Rhonda said. She stepped out of the way and admitted Laverne to the apartment. 

As always whenever she entered Rhonda’s domicile, Laverne was stricken by how very pink it was inside. Like stepping into an enormous shell, or the rind of a watermelon. She sat down on one of the blonde’s golden chairs and crossed her legs. 

“Would you like something to drink? Rhonda still has a semi-full carafe of champagne that should be cold.” 

“Sure,” Laverne said. How often was she offered champagne? With her goosebumps, she needed something to take the edge off.

Laverne watched the blonde bustle around the large apartment silently. Humming to herself, Rhonda poured a Dixie cup’s worth of champagne into a small plastic cup and handed it over. Laverne winced as she sipped it. 

“Well, sit down! Tell Rhonda what’s bothering you.” The starlet sidled down onto the couch beside Laverne and tugged the edge of her pink robe over her lacy nightgown.

“Okay. Uh, I’ve got a hypothetical question for you,” she said nervously. The starlet fluttered her Bambi lashes at Laverne, waiting for the juicy part of the tale. “Have you ever known a guy for a long time? A really long time?”

“Yes. Why, Rhonda’s known her father all of her life!” she replied.

Laverne said, “No, I mean romantically. Did you ever date someone you knew as a kid?”

“Well, before Rhonda left the holler to become a full-fledged model,” she said, “I dated a boy named Bobby Sue Acton. I’d known him since I was six years old. He was a nice boy but well – a bit too traditional.”

“Oh, so he didn’t want you to become an actress?”

“Or a dancer, or a model, or a spokeswoman.” Rhonda shook her head. “He wanted me to join his pork empire and well – Rhonda and red meat do not mix.”

“Ahah,” Laverne said. She swished down some more of the champagne. 

“But Laverne, Rhonda senses you aren’t here for her advice vis a vis pork,” she said. “It’s about you and Lenny, isn’t it?”

Laverne flushed. “Right so…You already know I’ve got maybe-feelings for Lenny.” 

“Rhonda has excellent hearing. She’s well aware of your feelings and Lenny.”

“Aww geeze,” she groaned. “Well, today we went out and he kissed me and I got goosebumps.”

Rhonda raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me Lenny infected you with…”

“I don’t wanna know the end of that sentence,” Laverne snapped. “No, Rhonda – when I get goosebumps, it usually means I’m crazy about a guy.”

“Oh!” Rhonda said. “How quaint!” Then, under Laverne’s glare, she said, “This is a wonderful thing.”

“It’s too soon,” she said. “I don’t want to go crazy and rush things with him. I’ve been doing way too much of that lately.”

“Well, you have known him for a period of time…”

“Since we were young,” she admitted.

“And during that period you must have learned a lot of things about Lenny.”

“Yeah, I know him like the back of my hand,” she admitted.

“Then it’s really not rushing, is it, Laverne?”

She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

“Rhonda is wondering…does it have something to do with that Randy fellow that Sonny mentioned?”

Laverne felt herself turn pale. “Don’t say his name to me.” Randy was a raw wound, an open bleeding sore buried deep in her heart. Her Pop was right – every day it hurt less. With Lenny, it didn’t hurt at all. But was some part of her that kept dancing around the tenderness buried there, afraid that she’d never forget or be able to love wholly. 

“Rhonda’s been around a few blocks,” she said. “Perhaps you could speak to her truthfully.”

“No, it’s nothing. I promised Lenny we wouldn’t rush things,” she said. “So…we’re not gonna rush things.”

“But you still wanted my advice?” Laverne nodded. “Laverne…if the man gives you goosebumps, and goosebumps mean you love him, you can’t pick who you love.”

She winced. “Yeah. I thought so. I just…it’s _Lenny!_.”

“So it is. But you might have made a worse choice. And he is a fairly fantastic kisser.”

“Wait, you kissed him?!” The jealousy in her voice was childish – and Laverne had done much, much more with the man – but she couldn’t stop herself.

“Just once. He thought I was cold and Rhonda proved for once and for all that she’s not.” She shifted her shoulders and smiled fecklessly. “Lenny is…an interesting man. He’s done better in this town than any man with that sort of voice has the right to do. If you aren’t going to keep him Laverne – for heaven’s sake, throw him back.”

“I ain’t tossing him anywhere.” She got up off the seat. “Look, Rhonda, I’ve gotta go.”

“Rhonda will see you tomorrow! I hope I helped, Laverne.”

Laverne sipped the champagne and wasn’t shocked to find that it had gone a little flat. “Yeah, you did.” She dumped the cup out on the way to the door, and headed home to a futile night of tossing and turning.

*** 

Going to the movies with Lenny as his quasi-girlfriend wasn’t very different from going with him platonically. He still paid for the tickets. She still paid for the popcorn. Together they ended up watching Rosemary’s Baby, and during all of the jumpscares she squealed and grabbed at his forearm. 

Lenny, to be fair, did it more than she did. And he could squeeze hard, still.

Together, they took a walk on the beach, stopping at a pop stand for dinner and ice cream.

She watched him the whole time, moving along in the baseball shirt they’d both worn. “Len?”

“Mph?” He finished licking his ice cream and turned to look at her. 

“I’ve always wondered – when did you know you liked me?” This was a subject they’d never probed.

“We was six,” he said. She could see his faint blush in the moonlight.

“Six?” She’d known him since she was around four, when their parents had moved from New York and New Jersey, respectively.

“Yeah. Well, that was the year my dad lost his job, so I had to get money from the teacher all the time for lunch and everyone made fun of me and no one wanted to play with me but Squiggy.”

“Oh.” She’d remembered that year. And maybe she’d made fun of Lenny a little herself in those days. She felt shame wash over her, keen and biting.

“Anyway, Tony Picconi was trying to beat me up for my lunch money. I knew if I let him have it I wouldn’t eat all day, so no way was I going down without a fight. So I was losing – like always – and then out of nowhere came this crazy girl with braids and these little overalls…”

“…They were jeans,” she said, smiling fondly at the memory of the child she’d been.

“…After that, Tony never mugged me for my lunch money again,” Lenny said. He shoved a hand into his pocket. “Anyway, that’s when I uh…felt lint for you the first time.”

“Oh, Len.” She’d only done the right thing – beaten up a jerk, just like any nice person would. But for Lenny It was an act of love. And for her – deep down, even back then – maybe it had been too.

She had to kiss him after that revelation, until his spine melted and his hands tentatively rested against her hips.

He pulled away and examined her expression. “We don’t have to tonight,” he reminded her. “Y’know, red sea and all..”

She kissed his neck. That would be over in a couple of days, and she couldn’t wait to touch him. “I know. We don’t have to do it. But maybe…you can come back to my place? Sleep with me tonight?”

He bit his palm.

She laughed and looped her arm around his slip hips, padding back toward the ice cream truck.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, Surprise

How was it that she always slept easier in his arms? Shouldn’t it be harder? Shouldn’t she be annoyed by the sound of his snoring?

Laverne rolled over to greet the Thursday afternoon sunlight as it streamed through her balcony window and lit Lenny’s hair gently golden-red. Her fingertips brushed it into place and she watched him, quiet and grave, as his arms held on tightly.

There was something about the boy – there always had been, but especially now. Maybe dating her was giving him a newfound sense of confidence, or maybe he’d just always been this person, and she’d never dared notice it before. 

When she tried to wiggle out of his embrace this time, he held on tighter. 

Laverne considered the clock. There was more time to be spent. When one blue eye opened lazily, she kissed him between the brows.

“I wanna take you to a museum,” he said, apropos of nothing.

Laverne raised an eyebrow. “A museum? Len, we ain’t exactly museum people.” She did owe him two more dates – and he owed her a whole lot more in the fantasy department. But she was still bleeding lightly and her now-predictable body should be done.

Two more days was all she needed.

“Why not? I ain’t never been to one before.”

“That’s ‘cause you think they’re boring.”

He shifted his shoulders. “Yeah, well, they’re always looking down on people like us when we go. But maybe if we’re together it’ll be different?” 

Laverne raised an eyebrow. She knew, somehow that he wouldn’t let it go. Maybe he wanted to show her off a little; maybe he wanted to take a little bit of advantage of her.

Lenny lifted a shoulder. “But it might be fun to go. Look at pretty stuff while you sit next to me just as pretty.” He bounced eagerly beside her. “Please, Laverne?”

“But…”

“You’re pretty and classy. You’d look like you’d belong there.” 

Ugh. This guy. 

“Okay, I’ll go. But on one condition.”   
He raised an eyebrow. “If it’s about putting it in your butt…”

“Len, we’ve gotta work up to that,” she said. “But…well..” She squirmed.

“Ooh,” he said. “When you move like that it means you’ve got a sexy surprise for me. What? Tell me!”

She took a deep breath. “Remember when you said you wanted to figure out how many times I can come in one night? I should be done tomorrow. Maybe if we go out on Saturday you could…?”

His eyes flared with hunger and he giggled. “Has anyone ever told you you’re the best…uh, whatever you are…ever?” Lenny asked.

“Eh. I’m just me,” she said, then poked Lenny in the chest. “And I still wanna do the butt thing. And the um…movie thing…”

His grin got licentious. “You ain’t helping me think non-red-sea-parting thoughts here, Laverne.”

She groaned and shoved him back a distance before getting up. Lenny was still wearing his Bullwinkle pajamas, which somehow made him look innocent even as he sat there semi-hard and his eyes roamed her body.

“Come on. We can have cereal and juice and toast, then I’ve gotta go.”

“Coffee?” he yawned, scratching his stomach.

“All out. I’m going shopping Friday.” 

“Aww,” Lenny remarked. Then he got to work helping her dish out their simple breakfast. They ate it up with their knees touching under the table, and then she kissed him, ignoring his morning breath. 

By the time she came down, showered, with her teeth brushed, and ready to grab the morning bus, he was gone.

*** 

He stayed there in the back of her mind, obstinate and sweet, over the next few days. When Sheba called and invited her to a march for the following Sunday after the circle she said yes, though she’d planned on spending the day after the museum lying in bed, if Lenny was going to work that hard to get her off he deserved to sleep in. 

She already had a couple of plans for him involving one of her vibrators and a blindfold, but she knew he’d need a little coaxing to follow her on that path.

She finally finished the food evaluation and was moved on to water testing, which involved walking in boots in ankle-high water. Not quite as entertaining, but much less threatening to her gag reflex.

By the time Saturday rolled around she was ready to roll, too. Primping and prepping in her mirror, dressed up in her Sunday best, she was fully ready to be seduced – by art. And by Lenny. Hopefully both at the same time.

With that in mind, she left her panties in the top drawer and headed out to meet him at the truck. Even if the museum was a bust, at least she was going to score some tonight.

*** 

They stood before the large fresco that decorated the south wall of the gallery. Neither of them exactly knew anything about art – in fact, they’d relied on Shirley to tell them everything – so they pretended to understand what they didn’t understand and they drifted from room to room and let the pictures dazzle their eyes.

Laverne thought to herself that it was nice – it didn’t feel fancy or phony baloney or our of mental league. Anyone could understand a picture of the Madonna holding Jesus, staring balefully out into the middle distance.

She flushed uncomfortably as she sat down before the picture, with Lenny and his starry blue eyes and his good suit and porkpie hat all making a quiet assemblage beside her. Hopefully Mother Mary couldn’t read her thoughts or see under her dress. Maybe she should’ve thought this through. 

“It’s really…big,” Lenny observed. 

“Yeah,” Laverne said. They tilted their heads tried to see the painting from a different angle. 

“You wanna go home?” he asked.

“We got one more gallery to get through,” Laverne said. “Shirl would tell me to ‘enrich’ myself.”

“Laverne,” said Lenny, “you ain’t a loaf of bread.”

She poked his shoulder. “Come on. If you do, I’ll show you a surprise.”

That excited Lenny more than anything she could have offered him. After staring at a lot of pieces of modern art that made no sense to either of their gazes, they walked together to the truck.

“So where’s my surprise?” 

She glanced to the left, then the right, and briefly lifted her shirt skirt before diving into the passenger side seat. “Here,” she said.

Lenny’s jaw was on the ground, but he managed not to hang himself with his own safety belt.

“You’re crazy,” he gasped. “Where’d your panties go?”

“They’re in my drawer back home. And you love it,” she said.

He broke several land-speed records getting the two of them home, but his lips were all over her before they could stumble their way into his apartment. 

She giggled before her bottom hit his bunk. He wanted to make her come as many times as she could? Let him try.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the best way to say 'I love you' is when no one can hear it.

She might have known she was in for it when Lenny came into the room with his big blue eyes flashing and his jeans tented to extreme proportions. But Laverne just smirked up at him and puckered her lips. 

He kicked the door closed. Laverne wiggled her hips in anticipation on the bunk as he crawled over to her on his knees. He just shoved the hem of her mini-dress up without saying another word to her, and then his face was between her legs.

Laverne was aware of his warm tongue and the nip of his teeth. When he spoke to her, she had to ask him to say it again. 

“I told you to grab my hair if you want me to stop,” he said, and then his mouth was occupied. 

Laverne was ready for him. Her fingers laced through Lenny’s hair, held him tight. Lenny ate her out with determined ferocity, fucking her almost immediately with his tongue, and she didn’t protest, or have time to do so, before she was coming. The orgasms swept her completely away, like an ocean wave, coming up over the top of her head and slamming her into the ground and leaving her shaking.

She felt the hand holding her thigh still unflex itself, his thumb extending.

_One._

She lost track of everything – not caring that she was letting Lenny make her on the bottom bunk, that she was probably going to break her nails against his scalp, that she was soaking into the sheets and Squiggy would probably have a lot of awkward questions about why his mattress was wet if they didn’t get a towel under her.

And Lenny’s fingers uncurled against Laverne’s thigh, and she counted them in silent amazement as she fell over the edge of the world for him.

_Two…three…four…six…_

He surfaced just once, between the fifth and the sixth one. Looking Laverne straight in the eyes, Lenny nuzzled her, eyes locked on her gaze, and let her brush downward from his mouth, smearing her wetness from his soft lips to the base of his throat and down to his chest before sliding back up and diving back in. The notion that he wanted to wear the scent of her like some sort of exotic cologne made her whole body tense – the next orgasm was a matter of him sliding two fingers inside of her.

It felt like hours before Lenny finally came up for air again. “Ten!” he said, and his voice was husky but totally triumphant as he sat back on the floor, sitting between her legs. Laverne – still shivering, still trying to come down off the high – curled herself up into a ball, away from his probing fingers and antic mouth. “That…” Lenny said, and she could see the confusion in his eyes. “Oh. Too much?”

She nodded.

He sighed. “I said grab my hair if you wanna stop,” he reminded her. The reproval in his voice was gentle and fond, as if he were scolding her for taking too much ice cream.

True, but she’d been busy riding his face the whole time. Her bra was all askew, her breasts spilling out over the top of the cups and still pink from how hard she’d grabbed herself in the ecstasy of the moment. Her dress was rucked up; she was a sweaty mess. “I…uh…whew…” she couldn’t do words at the moment apparently. She tried to lie still and calm, let her heartbeat regulate, catch her breath.

He stared at her with a combination of pride and worry, and he stroked her side, patting her as gently as he could. “Wow, I didn’t know I could do that to anyone. I didn’t break you, did I?”

The question made her laugh, which made him pout at her in reply. Then he let her alone. Laverne vaguely heard him getting up, and then heading into the bathroom a few minutes later. She could hear his gasps and her name on his lips, and she let out a wicked little laugh, reminded of the very first time they’d been together. 

She got naked while he was busy, and tossed her dress aside, her stockings, her shoes. She pulled his pillows and his blanket down onto Squiggy’s bunk and wondered how thoroughly she would regret sleeping in his bed. Then she remembered asking Shirley if Lenny had given her a rash when he’d kissed her back in Milwaukee. Her life had changed, entirely, in just three years.

“Help me get the sheets?” she asked. Lenny had frozen in the doorway to the bathroom – his blue eyes were wide when she took her in. It felt good, to know she could arrest him mid-step like that. Then he snapped into motion and grabbed the sheet and lined the bed.

“Staying the night again?” Lenny asked.

She smiled. “Yeah. Hey, where did Squig go?”

“I talked him into going to this convention in Oxnard overnight. Turns out proctologists have deep pockets and they love investing in flicks like ours.” He shrugged at her and pulled the blankets tighter around the two of them, letting out a deep sigh.

Laverne somehow doubted that was true, but she didn’t fight him on the subject. She crawled into Squiggy’s bed and made room for Lenny. He turned the light off and they spooned together. It was pitch dark outside, her logy mind registered, and they’d gotten in around six.

Minutes passed. Then she heard it.

“I love you,” he muttered against the top of her head. She realized, abruptly, that Lenny thought she was asleep. Drifting to a sleep of his own, he held on to her so tightly she could feel his fingertips pressing into her hips.

She waited until his breathing was perfectly even before she said “I love you, too.” Trying the words out, letting them rest upon her tongue and be spoken. She didn’t know if she’d be able to repeat them to his face.

But those goosebumps weren’t going away.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hashtag butt stuff - part one.

She woke up sometime past twelve, registering the fact that she needed to pee and that Lenny was whistling at the boys’ stove – cooking totally naked, aside from the checkered frilled apron he’d dragged all the way from Milwaukee.

Groaning, she got out of bed and got to work stripping the sheets off so Squiggy wouldn’t know what they’d been up to. The evidence was shoved away into a bag. She thought to herself that they needed to tell him what was going on already. It would make being with Lenny so much easier, so much more of a walk in the proverbial park.

“Morning,” Lenny tossed over his shoulder as he continued to stir breakfast about in a large pan. Laverne grumbled and he laughed. “Still ain’t a morning person, huh?”

“Is anyone?” she groaned. 

He stepped away from the stove and kissed her forehead. “I am when we’re together.”

“Len…” Was this still too fast? Were they testing the waters still? Dipping a pinkie toe into the lake of romance? She didn’t know anymore. She remembered the sound of him saying he loved her, and her heart did a flip into her stomach. She play-punched his arm and he blew a razzberry at her. 

“Come on, breakfast is up.”

Amazingly, it wasn’t a combination of beaks and hog snouts, but bacon, eggs and toast that greeted her. Very simple fare, but Lenny hadn’t scorched it to death, and she’d managed to eat Squiggy’s “brown stuff that was yellow once” without upchucking. There was little Lenny could do to her digestive system at this point in their relationship.

Lenny ate with his mouth wide open, watching her chew, occasionally hiding a smile in the back of his hand. She smiled back sometimes, and then the tips of her toes skirted his thigh. He leaned into the tease, humming a groan, rocking against her touch.

A few minutes later, he got up and took the dishes from her. “Squig’s gonna be home by the end of the weekend,” he told her. “But we got a little while. What do you wanna do? Go see a movie? Go to the pier? Find a haunted house?”

Laverne smiled. “I got an idea.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. She winced as something crashed, slipping from his clumsy fingers. 

Laverne came up behind Lenny. “I’m gonna go take a shower,” she told him. “And then I’m gonna call Shirl.” She grinned and leaned close to him and whispered, “And then you can come over and put it in my butt.”

His eyes went wide at her promise, and his hand shot toward his mouth. Laverne grinned and spun from him, laughing giddily, running over to the safety of her place. 

She liked the guy, but a little time alone to stoke up his passions would always keep the relationship hot.

*** 

It was somewhere past nine by the time she called Shirley, and Laverne was tired enough to let Shirley go on and on about the baby’s new tooth.

“I think he’s a little young to have a new tooth, Shirl,” Laverne said.

“Nonsense! My child’s a prodigy!” 

Laverne couldn’t stop herself from laughing. But the question she’d been suppressing bubbled up in her chest, and it spilled from her tongue. “Shirl,” she said. “If I told you I think I like a guy – really like a guy – how would you feel about it?”

“Oh, Laverne!” Shirley said. “I’m so happy…wait, it isn’t a sailor, is it?”

“You’re married to a soldier,” Laverne pointed out.

“A doctor solider,” she bragged. “A doctor soldier with a hitch that’s up in two years, thank you!”

Laverne chuckled. “Yeah. So I think I have a guy of my own.”

“Well, tell me everything about him!” Shirley demanded. 

“Uh…I’m gonna keep it a little bit of a surprise for you,” she said. Why had she frozen and fallen into a deep, freezing pit of panic when she tried to tell Shirley about Lenny? Pushing on, she said, “everything’s going really good. I’ll tell you more about him next week.”

“Well, good,” Shirley said. “And I’ll be calling you soon!”

“Yep, your turn next week. Love you and miss you, Shirl.”

“Always, Vernie.”

Laverne hung the phone up and let out a sigh. Two minutes after she did so, a knock sounded at the door.

Lenny burst in with a bottle of cooking oil and a grin. “I’m ready,” he said, and wiggled his eyebrows.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone knows something they shouldn't know...
> 
> Also, #buttsecks

“Easy there, Len. We’ve gotta set the stage a little.” She got up off the couch and headed to the linen closet upstairs. She spied the green army blanket she’d given him back in Milwaukee, the night he’d told her he was in love with her for the first time, and shrugged her shoulders. That wasn’t irony, but it was destiny. She also grabbed three towels and made a stop at the bedroom sink – one she made soapy and damp, the other she made wet, the third she left dry. 

By the time she came downstairs, Lenny was waiting for her stark naked, his legs crossed and his hand on his knees. He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at her. She tried not to roll her eyes at him – oh well, his enthusiasm was appreciated. And part of her wondered why she’d bothered to get dressed after the shower.

“Wouldya get your bare keister off of the couch?” she asked. He did, and she put the blanket down “That’s better. So we don’t ruin it.”

“Okay.” Lenny grinned. Spreading it out over the couch, she set the bottle of oil aside along with the towels on her coffee table. Satisfied, she gestured for him to sit back down.

“So how do we start?” he asked. 

“Like this,” she said, and reached up to kiss him. 

As always, their makeouts led somewhere wonderful. When he tugged at the side of her shirt she let him unbutton it and pull it off, then he caressed her through her bra and unclasped it. While his thumbs traced the peaks of each nipple, she squirmed down the straps of her bra, then tossed it to the floor with the shirt. He cupped the underside of her right breast and kissed all around the areola before actually caressing the nipple. His sweetness made something in her belly melt – she ran her fingers through his greasy hair and squeezed his shoulder, moaning softly – remembering that the walls were thin and Rhonda’s bedroom was two inches away.

“So pretty,” he mumbled softly, and he pulled her closer. Her left leg brushed his right thigh and she could feel the sticky warmth of his cock, half-hard and rising, poking at her knee. Lenny shifted to her left breast and then began to knead them. The kisses he’d treated her breast to turned into licks, the licks to light sucks, and the sucks to careful nibbling. Laverne flexed her internal muscles, the hot melty ache between her thighs demanding attention.

“Lemme get my jeans off,” she told him, and he sat back with a reluctant sigh. She got them off and down her thighs, and her panties followed. Lenny’s eye were on her, as she tucked her left leg onto the couch and spread her thighs slightly. Lenny scooted sideway, until he sat between her legs. Then he leaned over her body until they were both pressed together and prone, from knees to foreheads. He started kissing her in earnest. 

His hand arrowed down and between her legs this time, and he began to gently stroke her, caressing her labia. Breaking the kiss, Lenny spat onto his palm, and then reached between them again.

“Classy,” she hissed out.

“Your pussy likes it,” he pointed out. She was already wet from all of the attention he’d paid to her breasts, so Laverne didn’t think that was a fair assessment, but then he was petting her with his wet fingertips, the calluses rasping along her soft skin. And oh, did he know how to touch her. Laverne gave herself over to it, hips rising and falling as he teased, dotting his neck and cheek with kisses. Lenny’s eyes showed a new sense of focus and determination. He seemed determined to make her come, to make sure she enjoyed this part of the afternoon, in case she didn’t like his cock in her ass.

And Laverne was enjoying this part. Her teeth latched onto Lenny’s shoulder when her hips heaved upward. Lenny’s fingertips found her clit and began to circle before gently rubbing. She came when he shifted to sit back, bring his other hand around and pushed two fingers into her. A heartbeat passed before she started building up to another high, torturous peak. 

Lenny stared down at her, his fingers thrusting. When Lavene’s right hand found his cock and started tugging, he closed his eyes tight. When she came again she let go of him, and his wet fingers slipped free of her to trace her puckered opening.

She shivered at the sensation – which lay somewhere between pleasure and nervous excitement. He mumbled out a sound of relieved pleasure against her lips. One hand stopped petting her and the other reached over for the oil.

His fingers were much slicker when they returned to her. Carefully, gently, he stretched her open, his fingers coating her liberally with the oil, sliding slowly into her and then widening her slightly. She looked up and again saw a look of concentration in his eyes. One that made her want him due to his concern and his caring.

“How’dyou wanna do this, Len?” she wondered.

He laid down on his back. “You could get on top and ride me?”

“Hmm. How about…” She moved over, rested herself on her side in front of him. Her head rested upon his elbow, so he could get his right one between them. “That way you can get it in me easy.”

“Okay,” Lenny said. He sounded nervous against the back of her neck. He reached around her for the oil again, and when his cock brushed her behind it was slippery. “If it hurts I’ll stop,” he vowed.

“I know,” she sighed. She rested her cheek against his arm and felt him slip tentatively between her cheeks and a few inches upward.

Behind her, he hissed – and she felt herself part and open and give way. Laverne’s teeth worried Lenny’s forearm – it wasn’t as exciting as having him pulse between her more sensitive vaginal walls, but also intimate and thrilling in its own way.

Lenny apparently felt that way too. “God, Laverne!” he growled out, pushing in a little deeper. His clean hand held her still; palm pressed to her belly, as he squirmed around and fitted their bodies together.

“M’all the way inside. How does it feel?” he groaned.

“Really full,” she confessed.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Nope,” she kissed his arm. “How does it feel to you?”

“Like heaven,” he moaned. “You’re so warm and tight. Even a little wet.” Laverne couldn’t stop her proud smirk at his statement. “You hold me so good.” And he was holding her, and that was all she really wanted. He pulled gently out and then slowly plunged in, moaning, his head hitting the arm of the couch.

“Easy there, Len.” He began to slide in and out of her, with increasing speed and intensity – until she hooked her right leg over his hips and groaned as she moved in concert with him.

“Fuck,” he grunted back, soaking himself into her. He paused and shivered, arm tightening around her, before plunging back into the motion. Laverne refused to let herself be buffeted; she arched her back and began to impale herself upon him. She wasn’t going to get there but it was exciting, it left her hungry for something she couldn’t quite get.

Lenny was mumbling her name, and then shouting it – his big hand pulled her close and pinned her there as he listed forward and moaned, his hips working frantically, his cock filling her up. A few minutes later his hand slid down over her belly. A couple of strokes of his fingers against her clit made her gasp and tense in his grip. 

A few minutes later, she felt him begin to pull out. That was a less than comfortable or clean process. “Ugh,” she remarked. “Am I bleeding?”

“Uh – which answer will make you not hate me?”

“Lenny!”

“Only a little, and that’s supposed to happen. Or that’s what Squig told me when he did it with a girl.” Lenny let out a contented yawn as he pulled himself free of her completely, then took the soapy towel. “Want me to wash you?”

“Yeah.” It stung a tiny bit, but not enough to complain about. Then she sat up – and winced. Not the best idea after doing that, she noted quietly.

“What did you think?” he asked. He was cleaning himself beside her, and grabbed the dry towel and handed it to her.

“Not bad,” she said. Laverne had put it in the ‘fun, but maybe not every day’ category within her brain. It hadn’t hurt, and it had been exciting and different – even exotic – but it wasn’t a huge erotic turn-on.

Lenny’s thick eyebrows rose at the comment, but he said nothing, and kept cleaning himself.

The phone rang and Laverne groaned. She walked to the side table and picked it up, praying it wasn’t her Pop. 

It wasn’t. “Laverne! Like, it’s Sheila! Where the heck are you, the march is like, totally starting in an hour!”

Laverne winced. How had she managed to forget what she’d committed herself to? “I’m so sorry! I’ll be there! Just gotta grab the late bus!” 

When she looked up he blinked at her in surprise. “Sorry,” she said, pecking his lips, then running for the stairs. “Plans for a march, gotta go!” She tossed on clean underwear, a teeshirt, cut-offs and sneakers, then grabbed her purse. “You don’t mind being alone, do you, Len?”

She saw a dark cloud pass over his features, but then he shook his head. “Nah. I’ll be fine here. See you tomorrow?” 

“Sure!” she grinned, and dashed out the door.

*** 

Laverne let out a groan of relief as she entered the apartment several hours later. Marching in a huge, sweaty crowd after having really vigorous anal sex wasn’t the brightest idea she’d ever had, but at least it had happened, and she’d tried to make a difference. 

A difference she could’ve made with Lenny at her side. She let out a grunt. Most of her protest friends knew abstractly about his existence – why had she chosen not to ask him to come? 

Because she was a coward, she realized. A big, old, stinky fraidycat.

“Great,” she groaned. “It’s like staring into the face of a coward.”

Her desk chair promptly spun around - and in it was Squiggy. “Hello!” he said.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's the sound of one door slamming shut?

Laverne jumped a mile at his sudden explanation. “Why didn’t you just come through the door?”

“Because, Laverne – I was relying upon the element of surprise!” He lurched to his feet and pointed at her. “Laverne. I understand you’ve been keeping something from me.”

Oh God. Why had he chosen to come confront her instead of speaking directly to Lenny? “Squig, I can explain, we…”

“No, Laverne – there are no words you might be able to…puke out…to heal my wounds,” he said. Then he pointed. “You see, I know why you been wasting all your time hanging out with Len lately – you’re planning a surprise party for my birthday!”

A train made of pure relief ran Laverne over. “Oh, Squig, you spoiled it!”

“Don’t worry! I’ll pretend that I don’t know nothing,” he said.

“Won’t be much of a stretch,” she muttered. Then she grabbed him by the elbow. “Why doncha go hang out with Len while I go talk to Rhonda, all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, - just don’t forget, I’m allergic to butter, so you gotta make the cake out of pure ground up fish!” 

Laverne’s upper lip twisted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Once he was out of the room, she tore through her possessions and found her address book. Squiggy’s birthday was on Monday. On impulse, she tore over to Rhonda’s place and begged for her help. 

“I suppose we could throw a wingding for Andrew at my place,” she said. “But you and Leonard really ought to tell him about your affaire de cour.”

Laverne figured out that she meant love affair, though Rhonda’s insistence upon using French thanks to her latest string of night school courses never failed to irk her. “We’re working on it.” They weren’t, but Laverne thought they ought to be at this point. She and Rhonda made plans and a list, Laverne delivered a couple of Squiggy’s favorite records from her collection, they agreed to split the cost of supplies and favors, and Laverne agreed to make a fish cake that night.

It was cooling when Lenny burst through her front door abruptly, a look of angry determination on his face. “Len…” she started to say, but he grabbed her up and kissed her passionately, suddenly, until her body responded and her arms snaked around his neck, meat cake particles on her oven mitted hands or not.

Lenny let her go, then gently took her arm in his hand. “What do these mean?” he asked, pointing at her goosebumps.

Laverne pouted, pulled her arm out of Lenny’s grip. “Whatt’re you trying to do to me, huh?” 

Lenny glared at her. “Goosebumps mean you love me. Shirley told me that.”

“When the heck did you talk to Shirl?” Laverne asked.

“She called while you were out and I was still on the couch. I told her that you’d been getting the shivers sometimes, and she said to be sure you stayed warm. I said fine, I do that, and she tells me ‘is it after she kisses whoever she’s been dating? She gets goosebumps when she’s in love.”

"I’m gonna slap that girl,” Laverne muttered. She looked at her arm. She looked at Lenny’s pleading face. “Len.”

“I love you, Laverne. I was just afraid to say it.”

Oh. And she loved him. But getting the words out, managing to get out of her own way – could she do it? “I just…I need time, Len.”

“Why?” he said. “Don’t you really love me?” he asked.

She flushed. “I…”

“You?” he asked, eyebrows rising.

“We said we were gonna take it slow,” she said lamely, and then felt embarrassed by her own poor dodging. 

He frowned. “So that’s how it’s gonna be?”

“Slow ain’t saying ‘I love you’ a month into dating, Len,” she said. 

“No,” he said. “But I know how you feel. You know how I feel. So why not…?”

“We still got a bunch of dates to do,” she said hastily. “And we got a couple more favors to trade.” She hadn’t meant any of this to become such an intimate exchange; hadn’t meant to fall in love with Lenny at all in the first place. But here they were, face to face, and he was holding her hand, a plea in his eyes. 

“Laverne,” he said quietly. “I know I ain’t Randy…”

She pulled back and away from him, unable to endure the sound of Randy’s name passing between his lips. “I have to finish the cake for Squiggy’s birthday, Len. The party’s tomorrow – I told him that’s what we’ve been doing spending so much time together. Would you like to go together?”

“Yeah,” said Lenny. “Sure.” His flat tone made her worry, but he rushed away before she could say anything else to him.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's his party, and she'll pout if she wants to.

Laverne went through her Sunday night and Monday morning with an angry lump in her throat. Routine was routine, and she knew how to live it – into the shower, breakfast in her stomach, the bus ride to work, the sound of Chuck’s voice speaking nerdy inanities in her ear as she tested this and tightened that. A sack lunch outside by the beach. Four more hours and clocking out. The late bus, and home again.

All of it was part of life, but with everything uncertain and no Lenny there beside her, it was colorless, spermless, joyless. She showered, dressed for Squiggy’s party and got the meat cake out of the fridge. 

When Lenny showed up at her doorstep he was stormy-eyed, in a plaid suit, and his anger was so obvious, even as she followed him to Rhonda’s place.

As she knocked, he boiled over. “I washed my feet for you!” Lenny blurted out suddenly.

She froze still, the cake in her hand. “Huh?”

“I washed my feet for you!” he said. “And my hair! And I kept my clothes clean, and my underwear, and I cut my nails so I couldn’t scratch you.” 

“Len…”

“And you can’t tell me I ain’t special,” he said. “So why can’t this be love?”

The door flew open, and there was Rhonda, standing there in her pink peignoir. “Lenny! Laverne! You’re looking..very purple.”

Laverne looked down at herself, then at Lenny. She was wearing a purple paisley mini dress. He was wearing purple pants, and there was a purple checkered pattern on his camel colored sports coat. How had they done it? She cringed at herself, but managed a smile as Rhonda let them into the apartment.

Laverne put the cake on the side table, and then moved toward the center of the room. The majority of the people there were Squiggy’s friends from the agency - talent and acts that the boys managed. She ate Rhonda’s canapés and watched Lenny as he mingled. 

She couldn’t help but wonder at her own cowardice, when normally she feared no human being. Lenny’s question echoed in her head. Why COULDN’T this be love? Why was she so afraid to give herself up to the thing she’d already told Shirley she felt?

Because, she realized suddenly, Randy. Because men who fell for her tended to evaporate into the ether, or worse – die violently. Because as brave as she was, she couldn’t take another heartbreak like Randy in her life. Sonny had been bad enough.

She wanted to spare Lenny from the pain, even if he wanted to feel it. 

She watched him circulate and felt his eyes on her. She skated off into the corner of the room, hiding when Rhonda said Squiggy was coming. When he entered the room it was to mock surprise and many blandishments. He kissed her cheek and told her she looked ‘titulous’ and she didn’t ask what he meant.

Laverne regretted not punching him. But by then Squig was opening his gifts, sipping booze, flirting with girls Laverne had never met before.

He then switched the record on the player and grabbed a beer. “Hey! This one is for Laverne and Lenny!” He yelled to be heard over the music.

She wondered how much he knew as he lifted a beer in her direction and put on The Look.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bandaging old wounds - and new ones.

Lenny watched her quietly, his bottle dangling between his fingertips, eyes dark and thoughtful in the dim light. Laverne moved her hips to the beat of the song, trying to ignore him, not wanting to be looked at the same way he was watching her, with that weird intensity of his. She grabbed a guy’s hand, dragged him onto the dance floor, and tried to Twist to the beat. She realized two seconds later it was Junko the Clown. He danced back eagerly, and she shrugged, falling into the rhythm. 

She was only aware of Lenny’s uncoordinated dancing beside her when she tripped over his extended leg and fell to the floor, taking him with her in a tangle of limbs. 

“Ow!” Laverne yelped.

“Sorry,” he said automatically. Laverne could hear Squiggy laughing something about a party foul, but as she disengaged herself with Lenny she noticed she’d managed to give herself rug burn.

With Lenny’s help she got to her feet, but she limped stubbornly over to Rhonda. “Can I use the bathroom?” she asked Rhonda, tapping her shoulder.

“Oh, of course! It’s past the wet bar.”

Laverne hadn’t noticed the wet bar. She decided to get herself very, very drunk after she fixed her scrape.

Lenny burst into the room a minute later, while she was sitting on the toilet seat trying to put Bactine on her cut. “Len! How did you know I wasn’t going?” she blurted out.

“I’ve seen you in weirder positions,” he said, and he took the dipstick out of her hand and sat on Rhonda’s passion pink tub, dabbing her cuts.

“When’re you gonna stop hurting yourself?” Lenny asked.

“I’m not hurting myself,” she said, and winced as he dabbed alcohol on her wound. “Not on purpose.”

“I know,” Lenny said. “But I seen you do too many things in the last couple of years. It makes me worry about you.”

He might have been referring to everything from her behavior tonight to the horrors of her multiple dates with married men. But it still got her hackle up.. “You don’t get to play mister moral with me, Len,” she growled. He grabbed a bandaid and slapped it on her knee.

“Guess not,” he said. He kissed her cheek then. And she had to think of the hundreds of times when she’d kissed Lenny to keep him from crying when he’d hurt himself before. But he left her there alone to deal with her own foolish feelings. And there was no Shirley at the party, to make her boo boo face go away. She stared at her bruised, bandaged up knee. And then the realization struck her – why not at least try? They were doing everything but actually dating officially as a couple. Telling him she loved him, though…

She burst out of the bathroom, hobbling around. But Lenny wasn’t in Rhonda’s apartment anymore. Squiggy hadn’t even seen him leave. Laverne stayed long enough to eat a little food and then fled the room, apologizing to Squiggy, who was clearly enjoying the drama going down.

Tomorrow she’d confront Lenny. But right now she wanted to lick her wounds – and perhaps confront her best friend over the phone.


End file.
